


Disappear In Every Way

by SaintEpithet



Series: Lovecraft meets Westeros - Dark Corners of the Known World [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, The Shadow Out of Time - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Book: The Lands of Ice and Fire, Book: The World of Ice and Fire, Cultists, Cults, Don't copy to another site, Dothraki, Elsewhere Fic, Existential Horror, Fictional Disease, Gen, Hardhome, House of the Undying, In-Universe Alternate Realities, Inspired by The Shadow Out Of Time (H.P. Lovecraft), Jurassic Planetos, K'Dath, Kingdom of Sarnor (ASoIaF), Leng (ASoIaF), Lovecraftian, M for (fictional) Drug Use, Magic, North of the Wall, Old Valyria, Outer Gods, Qarth (ASoIaF), Sea Monsters, Sea Travel, Shade of the Evening, Sothoryos, Summer Islands (ASoIaF), Time Travel, Unseen Westeros, Visions, Warlocks, Warlocks of Qarth, Wildling Culture & Customs, Worldbuilding, Yeen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2020-09-19 10:50:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20329918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintEpithet/pseuds/SaintEpithet
Summary: In search of greather truths, a world-weary scholar steps through the doors of the House of the Undying, discovers days past, present, future, and never ever. Unravels mysteries long forgotten, receives answers that only ring true for one single moment. Explores ages and places that disappeared from the world, swept away by the unforgiving currents of time.





	1. Prologue – The Oval Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RuffedLemur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuffedLemur/gifts), [PointGiven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PointGiven/gifts).

> M-rated mostly because the narrator is tripping balls on Shade of the Evening the entire time.
> 
> There are chapters that will cover Valyria (for RuffedLemur) and Sothoryos (for PointGiven), hence the double-gift.

My journey had been a long and laborious one. When the caravan had departed, there had been close to one hundred people with me; merchants, mediators, guards, animal handlers and servants, but the farther we traveled the more the group shrunk. Dusty mountain roads, meandering along the southern coasts, had taken us far from our homelands. Dry desert heat filled our lungs, and the scorching sun above the Red Waste was our constant companion. Less seasoned travelers stayed behind when the caravan moved on from a trading post or an oasis, and new companions only joined us on a few rare occasions.

It was not the first journey of this kind I had undertaken. On the contrary. I had traveled far and wide in my life, chased every horizon, lived through hardships on land and at sea. I had explored, had learned, had fought, had discovered. Yet it had never been enough. Not for the scholars of my city, not for the priests and poets, and not for my father. I was his heir, his firstborn son, but no matter with which accomplishments I returned, I stood in the shadow of my younger sister.

Vane. The prophet. The priestess. The blessed. The revered.

Vane. The infallible. The mysterious. The favored. The foolish.

She hadn't earned her gifts - if they were even real. Yet she was the one who received our father's sole praise. Who could even tell if her visions were true? Her words predicted events in years far ahead, so far removed from our time that no man living amongst us would be their witness. Yet nobody doubted that the Great Goddess favored Vane, that the sing-song verses spouting from her lips were divine insights from the heavens. They had erected a temple in her honor when she was only a girl, gullible and blind in their newfound fervor.

I had grown tired of small minds and small cities a long time ago, had ventured out to greater insights and more enlightened cultures. The day I left home for good, Vane was preaching, spreading incoherent predictions to the crowd from the steps of her temple. Her azure gown danced in the warm wind, jewels given to her by adoring fools refracted the sunlight, and the gathered people hung on her every word. This was the kind of fame and fortune my father wanted, the easy, effortless and convenient kind. The wealth of knowledge I had acquired through hard work, patience and years of study meant nothing to him, a small mind content with what he had in his small world.

The dazzling sun stood high in a clear blue sky when the gates of the city came into view. Qarth, the Queen of Cities, envied by many, rivaled by none. Years ago, when I had traveled lands in the west, I had heard the title claimed by the city of Yunkai. Sheer hubris or perhaps the Yunkai'i didn't know any better. As impressive as their pyramids were, they were a pale shadow of the splendor of Qarth. The triple walls housed marvels beyond imagination, a wealth of vivid colors and sophistication. Streets cobbled with white-washed stone were lined with elaborate fountains, statues of heroes towered higher than men. In stark contrast to the barren Red Waste, the desert turned green within the tall walls. Gardens tempted with the shades of lush trees, flowers bloomed on terraces, balconies and rooftops. No, Yunkai bore no resemble to Qarth. The comparison was rooted in wishful thinking of the Wise Masters.

Most of my travel companions were merchants from near and far who came to trade with the Thirteen or the Ancient Guild of Spicers. I had done such business here in the past, but this time my visit had a very different reason. I carried no rare spices or precious fabrics with me, didn't have artwork or gemstones to be appraised. What I had come to find was not traded on the bazaars, wasn't transported to foreign markets in saddlebags or on ships.

No, after being adrift for so many years, my aspirations had turned to less tangible goods. Knowledge, enlightenment, a deeper understanding of the world; a legacy of my own, far removed from the transient, worldly desires of others. Wherever I went, I saw the same small, meaningless struggles. Men amassed wealth, then passed it down to their sons, these sons accumulated more possessions to pass on to sons of their own, and it continued without end, without purpose. Dynasties rose to power to be overthrown or surpassed by another, kings and queens were born, lived and died, and nothing ever changed. Priests and poets spun tales of gods that were adored, worshiped, and forgotten, leaving prophecies and promises forever unfulfilled. There had to be more to life than this endless cycle, the meaningless chase of meaningless things. I wanted answers and insights; clarity, a true purpose. To be remembered for something greater than power or wealth. I wanted my life's work to truly matter for all days to come.

As much as the warlocks appreciated my thirst for knowledge, they wanted to be certain I sought them out for the right reasons. Therefore I met my contact thrice in the Garden of Gehane, though I can't be certain it was the same man each time. His skin was pale, his lips blue, and his eyes were vacant with wisdom, however, with each meeting the ink patterns carved into his bald head seemed to change. He had introduced himself as Dareyush Dallan and his tongue was bare of an accent, however, his sharp features suggested he was not a native of Qarth.

Conversations, impressions, questions and answers, the exact purpose of our meetings was not set in stone. We spoke about all sorts of things on our walk through the garden. Dareyush deliberately jumped from one subject to another, inquired, called innocuous details into question, quietly listened to others.

"A true seeker!" he proclaimed on the third day, interrupting the recount I gave of my travels to Leng and Yi Ti. His voice echoed with cautious excitement as if a grand, yet doubtful revelation had made itself known. He regarded me for a long, quiet moment, then his hazy gaze drifted to the gently glowing Ghost Grass lining our path. "But what is it you seek? You possess wealth, your voice carries weight in many places, and you have learned things most men will never know."

"True knowledge," I replied without hesitation. "I have seen people follow false prophets in blind adoration. I have seen people fight meaningless wars and die for misguided kings. The world changes and yet it always stays the same. We tumble through eons, aimless and lost, with no discernable purpose or aspiration. What I seek are answers to the great questions, why are we here, where do we come from, and where do we go. Truth. I seek truth in this maze of fanciful, worldly distractions. I want to see things with my own eyes, want to know, not merely believe in flimsy speculation of poets and priests."

"A dangerous path." Dareyush turned his glassy gaze back to me, looked at me, through me, through the Ghost Grass, through space and time. "The answers you seek echo in the Palace of Dust, but finding them, recognizing the truth among possibilities and illusions, is all but an easy task. Many have entered in search of revelation and instead got lost between their own desires and fears. And even if you don't stray from your path, you may not like what you find in the end."

"I am aware of the risks." We continued our slow stroll through the garden, down the cobbled path between blossoming bushes and shimmering ferns. "And I am willing to face them. In my true heart of hearts this is not a choice. My travels have taken me to every horizon, I have seen all there is to see, learned all there is to learn. There are no roads left in this world that I haven't taken, and the final one has led me here." I nodded to a group of large palm trees and what lay beyond, somewhere outside the garden, at the edge of the city. "To the House of the Undying, to its doors that open to countless new worlds. There is nothing I fear along the ways that lie ahead of me there, nothing but the possibility of returning empty-handed once more."

Dareyush asked no further questions. He vanished into thin air right before my eyes, though I caught a glimpse of his pale purple robes at the far side of the garden, slithering through the air like snakes near the gate. For three days and nights I impatiently waited. Read tomes I had read a hundred times over, wandered the streets of the city in search of distractions, uncertain if or when the warlocks would summon me again. On the fourth day, I opened my eyes in empty quarters. The lavish decorations were gone, as were the artifacts I had brought; offerings to the Undying. All I found on the tiled floor was a small piece of parchment, on it a single line written in night-blue ink.

_A door has opened, true seeker. _

The trail leading from the road to the House of the Undying made it seem as if the crumbling structure was only a short distance away, but it felt like walking for hours to me. An illusion, perhaps, or the perception of time was skewed in the shade of the black trees. The grey ruin emanated an air of great antiquity which only enhanced the impression of time itself being altered and twisted by its presence. No windows, terraces or balconies adorned the ashen facade, only the gaping maw of the main gate loomed amidst the monotony of the withering wall. Tempted the foolish, the impatient, the rash with a prospect of swift revelations, but I had all the time in the world.

And so I made way to the hidden door on the eastern wall of the bleak ruin, patiently waiting for me in the shadow of the black-barked trees. The door, tall and oval, formed the mouth of a face, and I imagine to many the sight would have been unsettling. All I saw was the promise of answers and truths, the gateway to quenching the thirst I had felt for so long.

I did not notice Dareyush's presence until I stood under the scrutinizing gaze of the stony face, my hand almost touching the door's weather-worn surface. Maybe he had been there all along, waiting for my arrival in the shade of a small grove. Maybe he had just appeared out of thin air, the way he vanished from sight in the Garden of Gehane. Either way, he was not hiding from me. He approached, crossed the short distance without leaving footsteps in the pale sand, and wordlessly presented a tall crystal glass when he reached me.

The ink-blue wine had a pungent scent, but it tasted heady and sweet; like the memory of long gone, better days, like the last moment spent with a dear friend. Shade of the Evening. The warlocks made this concoction from the leaves of the black-barked trees, and it was said to open one's inner eye to the truth. Dareyush took the empty glass from my hand and returned to the shadowed grove.

"One must enter alone or not enter at all," he had told me in the garden, and these words echoed in my mind when I opened the door.


	2. The Fossilized Door

Dareyush had been waiting for me in the House of the Undying, though I had seen him stand by the grove when I stepped through the door. In the windowless room his robes looked even more shabby; paper-thin tatters of faded lavender shrouding his willowy form. The hallways and stairwells, however, were not void of light when he led me through the maze to my chamber. Illusions and realities danced behind doors, cast their iridescent glows and glimmers onto walls, floors and stairs. We walked through narrow passages that appeared as wide open fields in the otherwordly light of star-spangled skies. Crossed bridges over chasms filled with vast, luminous oceans. Climbed stairs that seemed to lead right through a firmament filled with fragments of suns.

Entering my chamber was sobering. After wandering through these fleeting marvels and shimmering shards of vistas, it felt like waking up from a febrile dream. The artifacts I had gathered during years of travels and trade afforded me only very modest accomodations, a small room bare of decorations on the smooth ashen walls. A simple bed, a desk with a single candle in a soot-stained, tinged holder, a rickety stool that could not have looked more uncomfortable if it tried. But it was enough. The lavish luxuries of my previous life now belonged to the past. This chamber served only as shelter for my body, mere protection from the elements while my mind wandered free. It was not unlike a tomb, I thought with subtle amusement, a resting place for my mortal husk.

During the first days of my stay Dareyush introduced me to other honored guests of the warlocks, though I had little interest in them and their tales. A flesh mender from Mantarys seeking new insights and techniques, a corsair king from Ax Isle looking to trade, a handful of others I cannot recall. These people would be gone once they had concluded their dealings with the warlocks. I, on the other hand, had come to stay.

Time is only a word in the Palace of Dust, one that does not carry a particularly pivotal meaning. Days and nights went by in the windowless chamber, and at some point I did not try to count them anymore. I ate whenever I heard my stomach rumble, I slept whenever my eyelids felt too heavy, and in my waking hours I read the tomes Dareyush gave me, hunched over the desk in the calm glow of my lone candle.

The reward for my patience awaited me on the desk when I woke up after a long day – or night – of study. A crystal glass, next to a slender carafe, and in it the ink-blue key to secret worlds.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

The abundance of choices alone was enough to drive a man mad. Every hallway, every corridor featured various doors. Some small and hidden, barely large enough to grant a child passage, requiring grown men to hunch or even crawl. Others were enormous double doors, ornate and fortified like the gates of great castles, and even more were everything in between. Wide and narrow, plain and richly decorated, door made of wood, door made of steel, doors made of stone, doors made of glass, and doors made of dreams. However, the overwhelming selection did not give me pause. I had made my choice shortly after entering the House of the Undying. One door in particular had my caught my eye in an instant, and the thought of it would not leave my mind.

Up the winding staircase outside my chambers. Down a corridor that became a crystalline bridge when one reached a domed hall. There was no floor underneath, none I could see, the bridge crossed what appeared to be a bottomless cavern. Glassy shards were floating on invisible air currents in the void, each piece a fractured vista from far away. The octagonal gallery on the other side was not always there, some days I passed through a plain, empty chamber, but I had seen the door of my choosing between the ornate columns here many times.

I cannot say what had attracted me to this door when I first saw it, but there had never been any doubt in my mind regarding this choice. Perhaps it was the great antiquity the fossilized surface emanated. Carved from the bone of a colossal beast, polished by the torrents of time, brittle, evanescent and yet everlasting. Perhaps it caught my attention due to its isolation. It was the only doorway in a vaulted gallery of considerable size, other recesses between the marble columns were empty, housed neither doors nor decorations.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

A valley of incomprehensible size unfolded before my eyes when I stepped through the door. The surrounding mountain range disappeared in the haze of distant fog, swallowed the spires of towers and minarets that emerged from the basin. The conglomerate dazzled my mind and it took a moment before I realized that I was overlooking a vast city.

Castles, temples, bridges, monuments to gods familiar and unknown stood huddled together, as if they had been built without any regards to practicality or common convention. I was still a good distance away, standing on top of a hill, in front of me a winding road that led down to the city's grey gate, but the layout I gathered from my elevated position couldn't possibly make any sense. Bridges and breezeways that simply ended in mid-air, connecting towers and battlements to nothing at all. Buildings that appeared to be stacked on top of others, fairly recent and better maintained constructions sat atop of crumbling ruins. Cobbled roads sprawled from collapsed temples, led right through thick walls, then disappeared amidst fields of rubble.

The most baffling feature, however, was the color – or lack thereof. Without exception, the buildings seemed to be made from the same ashen stone, some built with bricks, others carved directly into the steep walls of the grey mountains. The architecture suggested influences from many places, yet they blended together in their shared monotony. Grey YiTish temples without their famed green jade shingles, grey Qartheen manses without bronze and lapis lazuli decorations, grey Valyrian spires without golden sphinxes, and many more styles I didn't recognize, all grey in grey.

I assumed the drab city had long been abandoned, but when I began walking toward the gate I spotted a hazy figure in the distance. A man, I recognized as I came closer. He was dressed in long, dragging robes, just as faded and grey as his surroundings, offering no contrast to his grey beard and hair. He moved with purpose, though the irregular layout of the bridges and roads made it hard to tell where. Several times he disappeared from my view, only to emerge at another spot moments later.

When I reached the wall of this strange, silent city I hadn't seen the man for quite some time, but from his most recently observed locations I had surmised he was approaching the gate from the opposite direction. He must have spotted me, the only other living soul in this desolate valley, from the distance. Therefore I was not surprised to find the enormous doors of the gate open, nor to see the grey man operating the crank of the portcullis on the other side.

The chain squeaked, the portcullis rattled, and the man waved me inside. I hesistate to refer to him as 'old' or 'ancient'. Both words would paint an appropriate enough picture, but the truth is I couldn't tell whether he was younger than me or older than time. The most fitting description, perhaps, would be the comparison to an antique, yet impeccably well-kept book. There was deep wisdom in his grey eyes and his timeless features, yet the years had not left lines or marks on his unnaturally pale skin.

"Ah, Velon, I presume?" he greeted me with the mild interest of a scatterbrained scholar, evidently not surprised by my presence either. He fastened the chain and eyed me up from head to toe, then patiently waited for me to come closer.

"No, that is not my name," I truthfully answered.

"No matter, no matter," he muttered, cutting me off before I could offer a proper introduction. "Come in, I'll show you around and get you accustomed to your duties."

"My duties?" I echoed, confused why he didn't mind that I was not the aide he had expected. However, the prospect of being shown around in this grand, ashen city was tempting. I wanted to explore all the places the human mind hid from sight, and this was the kind of opportunity I had envisioned. "I am not Velon, I found my way here by chance," I added as I followed my guide into the maze of the city. "However, this appears to be a place of study and learning, the very thing I set out to find. If your assistant is delayed, and you're willing to teach me how to perform his duties, I'll gladly fill in until he arrives."

"Of course, of course." The grey man headed for a stone bridge that crossed only a flat field of debris, no precipice or river was anywhere near its position. "A desire to listen and learn is all you need, as listening and learning are my acolyte's only duties." There was an invisible smile in his voice, perhaps he was relieved that the absence of his acolyte would cause no trouble. "Only few journeys begin here, but it is where all of them end," he continued. "We leave some of us behind wherever the travel. We exchange years of our lives and pieces of our selves for new insights and impressions. Iluma Ayon is dedicated to preservation, a final resting place for what remains in the end." He stopped in front of the door of a slender tower, opened it, then turned around to wave me in. "It is my task, _our_ task, to remember. Who we were, who we became, which roads we traveled, the sum of the choices we made. "

After climbing the winding stairs for what felt like hours we reached a plain landing. The round hall was austere and felt oppressive due to its small size and the low ceiling. A handful of doors, as grey as everything else, stood ajar to my right. To my left an arch opened to a semicircular balcony overlooking the city, and simple round windows allowed the pale daylight to enter the room.

I followed my guide to one of the doors, unremarkable and wooden like the others, and found a rather cozy chamber behind it. Cozy, if it hadn't been so terribly cramped. Stone tablets with chiseled inscriptions, closely written pieces of parchment, leather-bound tomes, scrolls of all shapes and sizes almost swallowed the desk, its stool, and the low bed. Nabur, how my guide had once referred to himself on the way upstairs, turned to me with an inviting gesture. "Your chamber for the time being," he explained. "Not too spacious, but hopefully you find it comfortable enough."

"Of course," I gave back, barely containing my excitement over the insights I might find in these tomes. "A place to lay my head down at night is all I require."

"Good, good." Nabur nodded to the arch, and I followed him there. "That is all I can provide. Our duties are waiting for us out there, so you won't have to spend much time in this confinement."

We stepped out onto the platform, towering sky-high above the mindboggling conglomeration of grey buildings, and once I had overcome the sudden dizziness I realized the tower had to be located in the heart of the city. It seemed impossible, considering the short distance we had walked from the gate, but now I could barely make out its shape in the distance.

"How _do_ we perform these duties you speak of?" I inquired once I had somewhat gotten used to the sight. "Does Iluma Ayon have a library? Do we transcribe the histories from tablets and tomes to archive them there?" I imagined the stacks in my chamber had not been stored there for a lack of space elsewhere in the city. Even from my lofty position I didn't see movement, the buildings were unoccupied, there was nobody but the two of us here. More likely the books and scrolls were meant to be sorted and brought to more proper places, and I wondered how I would find my way through the grey maze below.

"Iluma Ayon _is_ a library." Nabur's eyes seemed to smile, though his stony expression remained unchanged. "Every rock is a monument, every house a shrine of remembrance. Songs no man has sung for a thousand years still sound in these alleys, tales of long gone days are alive in these streets." He wandered to the grey balustrade and absently let his gaze drift across the vast city. "The histories of all eons echo in this valley. We only need to listen to perform our duty to the past." His features darkened when he turned around, and there was something forboding in his voice when he continued to speak. "Explore Iluma Ayon to your heart's desire, there are no barred doors for you here. But never venture beyond the walls of the city."

"Why not?" I regarded the silhouette of the city gate in the distance. "What is out there? I did not see any dangers on my way here." In fact, I hadn't seen anything outside the wall, save the foothills of the grey mountains and the grey desert, stretching out endlessly on both sides of the road.

"Nothing," Nabur said, now sounding deeply haunted. "Oblivion. A graveyard for the nameless and the forgotten, for tales that will never be told to the end. Those who lost all of their selves on their journey roam these shunned lands, forever restless, too diminished to be dispersed even by the ravages of time."

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

Nights were as bleak as days in the valley, the moon shone as wan and weak as the sun. The city, however, sparkled with insights. Every day I rose at first light, descended the winding stairs, and eagerly performed my delightful duty. Perhaps, I thought, I sensed what awaited me here when I had chosen a door in the House of the Undying. The vision of Iluma Ayon was the sum of all I had longed for; endless roads paved with wisdom, mysteries and secrets revealed behind every door.

I read about a great hero of days long past who had led his people to freedom after centuries of oppression, and founded a new kingdom in the forests of Ifequevron. His tale was chiseled into the memorial plaque of a statue, showing the hero in the form of a bear. A shapechanger, the story went, who had mastered the art of 'becoming one with the forest' to escape the chains of his master in arcane disguise. He had later utilizied other, larger shapes on his journey, the depicted ursine one being the most beloved by his people.

I studied the texts of a mad scholar who had climbed the world's tallest mountains to catch a glimpse of realms that lay beyond the reach of the gods. His words were carved into the walls of a crumbling manse's solar, lines upon lines, covering every inch from the floor to the ceiling. Though he had never spied the 'kingdoms of stars' he was looking to find, I learned much about constellations, the moon and the tides.

I followed the life of a commonborn woman from Faros who had raised five children in a small, coastal village. She had lived a good if somewhat uneventful life, rarely knew hardship or hunger, and died contented at the old age of eighty-five. Her story was shown in large carvings lining a quaint alley, and at the very end, where an enormous Sarnori temple blocked my way, I found several of her recipes on a wall.

It never rained in Iluma Ayon, nor was there wind, snow or heat. Every day brought the same bleak, nondescript weather regardless of season – if the concept of such existed in the grey valley at all. Nothing ever changed, not in my perception, though tales and memories gave rise to new structures day by day. Nabur, as I had suspected since my arrival, was the only inhabitant of the vast city, but loneliness never overcame me in what might seem like dull, monotonous place. The mysteries and the mundane kept me company, and I never ran out of things to explore.

I can't say how long I lived in this city of inspiring splendor. Time worked differently here or stood still altogether. I don't recall eating or even feeling hunger, though I must have been there for months if not years. Iluma Ayon was eternal, however, my time here was not.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

In the evening I had completed my recollection of a warrior queen's reign. The task had been rather exhausting as the inscriptions telling her story were strewn about the inner walls of a massive tower, and I had ascended and descended more stairs than I could count. The coronation was described on the uppermost floor, the heiress' birth and her second wedding were detailed near the entrance, and I only discovered the queen's grand burial by chance in a half-collapsed dungeon. I was accordingly tired after my exploration, and easily fell asleep in my overstuffed chamber at night.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, however, I found the tomes and scrolls gone. At first I assumed Nabur had gotten around to sorting the ragtag collection, but then I spotted a lone candle on the otherwise empty desk that hadn't been there before. The same sight that greeted me in the House of the Undying, except for one detail. Instead of the plain door my chambers in Iluma Ayon and Qarth had in common, I now saw the fossilized door that had once led me to the valley. The vision wore off, and knowing that filled me with regret. There were so many tales, dreams and songs left to discover, so many memories demanding to be recalled. Yet there was no other way out, no choice but to bid my farewell to the grey city and leave.

The gallery in the House of the Undying had changed since my last visit, though not by much. The ornate columns still held the high vaulted ceiling, the walls were still barren and dark, but when I turned around, there was no door behind me. The passage to Iluma Ayon was gone as if it never existed at all. 


	3. The Goldenheart Door

"Iluma Ayon?" Dareyush raised his sharply arched eyebrows. "Only few find their way there so shortly after their arrival." He blew the steam off his crystal mug, then took a sip from the hot, azure-blue tea. "Perhaps there is more to you than I saw at first."

His words vindicated the thoughts that had overcome me since my return. I had followed my instinct, and I had not stumbled when I set foot on my chosen path. Of course there had to be more to me than met his eye. I wasn't one of those vain scholars who had come here hoping for hasty enlightenment. No, I had left my old life behind, had brought nothing but patience, didn't expect immediate results. The House of the Undying rewarded my commitment with a vision that confirmed I was cut from a different cloth.

When the time came and I found another carafe of deep-blue truths in my chamber, I decided to further my studies with a brand-new approach. The first door had called out to me, had occupied my thoughts; it had chosen me instead of the reverse. The second path would be truly my choice. I would wander the hallways in search of a door I never laid eyes upon before. Something new, something I had never thought about, something that presented itself as a completely blank slate.

The interior of the Palace of Dust was in a constant state of change, though some areas largely remained recognizable by the broad shape of their features. Near my chamber was a wide spiral staircase, for instance, and only the material of the steps frequently changed. Some days they were made from snow-white marble, on other days they were translucent red glass or weather-worn wood. The handrail went back and forth between two different forms almost daily; wooden posts with simple ropes turned into artfully forged silver and steel. Most hallways from the gallery led in the same directions as well, and only their height and width occasionally varied.

One location that frequently shifted completely was the landing above the spiral stairs. This would be the starting point of my search for an entirely unfamiliar door, I decided. With the multifarious taste of the blue wine still on my lips I ascended the stairs, blocks of red glass that seemed to glow from within. When I reached the top I was not disappointed. I had found a vast altar room here before, a lair filled with hundreds of tiny bats, the bedchamber of another scholar, a narrow storeroom that led to a single, locked door, and this time I found myself in a conservatory of some sort. The glass ceiling revealed a clear night sky, the windowed walls granted a marvelous view across wide open waters. One would expect this kind of sight from the top of a lighthouse, standing inside the beacon where the guiding fire was lit.

There was only a single door here, and to my delight I didn't recognize it. Intrigued, I went closer to inspect my finding and realized that what I had thought of as metal was indeed golden wood. The door looked heavy and thick which stood in stark contrast to its decoration. Feathers, birds of all sizes and shapes, flowers commonly found in hot, humid climate. Though the pale moon above the glass ceiling suggested it was deep in the night, the golden handle wasn't cold to the touch; instead it felt as if the sun had warmed it just before my arrival.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

Stepping through the golden door, I once again found myself on an elevation, a lush rolling hillside stretching out into the valley before me. Unlike Iluma Ayon this place was not barren or void of color. Palm trees, thick foliage, vines, and ferns grew around me. Here and there, large colorful birds fluttered under the canopy or took off into a clear summer sky. I was also not alone in this verdant paradise as I spotted two people in the distance, apparently waiting for me by the foothills. Their robes were as colorful as the birds, and both wore splendid capes made from amber and sapphire feathers, standing out brightly against the pair's dark skin. They smiled and waved to greet me when I came closer, and now I recognized it was a woman about my own age, and a boy nearing the end of his youth.

"Captain Korshid!" The woman smiled blithely and I noticed a gleam of recognition in her emerald eyes. "My brother and I thought you'd appreciate some company on the way to Nkambu. It must be rather dull to walk alone for so long."

Nkambu. I remembered the name of this town from my studies, though obviously I had never been there. The port, located on Omboru's northern shore, had been destroyed centuries ago during the worst storm in the history of the Summer Isles. "It is indeed," I began, taken aback by the realization that the golden door had led to the past. "Your company is much appreciated..." I continued, then paused and hesitated, stumped how to address the woman.

"Yasira Bhat, your first mate and cartopgrapher," she helped. "And my brother Suhil will be your steward." She laughed and shook her head. "Apologies for my giddy excitement, captain. The years of preparation for this voyage are taking their toll, and the honor of sailing under the command of a seasoned explorer only adds to it. I still can't believe we're finally embarking!"

Before I had come up with an idea to figure out where this voyage was supposed to take me, Suhil, evidently less excited than his sister, turned to me. "I didn't imagine you this pale," he plainly said, eyeing me up from head to toe.

"Mind your manners!" Yasira hastily cut him off, then looked back to me. "He's never been away from our village," she explained with a somewhat irked expression. "I don't know what possessed father to insist I take him along. If even the complexions of our own mountain tribes baffle him, what will happen if we really find lands inhabited by other peoples?"

What distant past had the Shade of the Evening taken me to? The Summer Islanders had not yet found inhabited lands across the Summer Sea? A grand voyage that had required years of preparation? I recalled a Ghiscari merchant ship had landed on Walano, though no formal contact between natives and crew had been made. However, the event had sparked the Summer Islanders' ambition to explore beyond their own shores as the foreigners introduced them to the idea that they were not alone in the world. The prospect of witnessing history intrigued me, therefore I decided to play along with the ruse. I would be 'Captain Korshid' for the time being, perhaps trace the true namebearer's steps into legend. It was quite possible the explorer I posed as was the one who discovered the island of Naath, and little was known about these early days of exploration.

"I'm quite used to such reactions," I assured Yasira with a smile. "Scholars and explorers alike often forget to appreciate the everyday oddities in our preoccupation. Always chasing the next great discovery, something new and exciting and unknown to the world."

"Too true, captain!" Yasira laughed, visibly relieved I had not taken offense from her brother's remark. "I've spent so much time studying the Talking Trees on Walano, listened to songs and tales of the past. Perhaps I'm the one who forgot how to behave around people!"

We began our way through the lively jungle and continued our light-hearted conversation. Yasira, that much I had gathered, was a scholar held in high esteem by the people. She had convinced several noble houses to fund her expedition and further her quest to prove that there were other lands. Some of her benefactors were attracted to the prospect of trade routes and potential imports from distant empires, others had political ambition and alliances on their minds. Yasira, however, didn't especially care for either. She wanted to see her theories come to fruition, wanted to learn about and understand the world.

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The port of Nkambu was smaller than I had expected, but for the ship that awaited us the opposite was true. The _Enigma_ was the most impressive vessel I had ever seen, though it did not resemble the famed swan ships at all. It was larger and bulkier, almost rivaling Ibbenese whalers, with two tall masts and brilliant white sails against the dark fine woods of the hull. My vision had taken me to a time when the well-known design of swan ships did not exist yet; centuries, possibly eons before the Slavers' Wars and the Years of Shame.

Yasira introduced me to the crew and a group of scholars and priests who'd accompany us. Our findings at sea had to be memorized in every detail as the Summer Islanders traditionally recorded their history in tales and songs. Upon our return the verses would be carved into the monumental trunks of the Talking Trees of Walano which I had visited myself once, long ago. I recalled the earliest carvings, going back thousands of years, that showed the Summer Islands all alone in the world. As centuries went by more shapes had been added, and the Known World unfolded bit by bit in the bark. Somewhere deep down inside I was aware that this was a vision, yet it was still an exalting feeling to witness the beginnings, see the map grow and spread from its humble first form.

We set sail under a clear, blue summer sky, navigating the shimmering azure waters of the Smiling Sea. The role of Captain Korshid afforded me the trust of the crew and my orders were carried out without hesitation. Though everyone had heard about Korshid's accomplishments, the circumnavigation and mapping of the Summer Islands being his greatest, nobody had actually met the man. During a supper with Yasira and her fellow scholars I learned why this didn't strike anyone as particularly strange.

"When I sent the messenger to request your command for this expedition, I frankly expected you to reject," Yasira said. She sounded cheerful as usual, but her blithe spirit couldn't cover up the relief about her initial concerns not coming to pass. "So many of my colleagues have tried since you retired eight years ago..."

"All too understandable," Eskandhor, a tall, slender man with snow-white hair, chimed in. "Princess Cheyelle, with all due respect, was nothing if not ungrateful. Mapping the islands - every shoreline, every lake, every river - within only ten years was a preposterous thing to ask from one man. Yet you delivered as promised, captain." He gave me a respectful, brief nod. "You had every right to be upset when Her Majesty denied you the funds for your own expedition."

"And I used my time in reclusion to further my cause," I gave back. By now, I had grown confident in my assumed role and no longer feared my answers might raise any suspicion. "Nowhere is the sky clearer than above the Nyaga Mountains, the stars don't shine this bright anywhere else. I continued my calculations, knowing one day I would get a chance to put my theories to the test." I chuckled and toasted to Yasira. "Perhaps Her Majesty's rejection was just what I needed to further my studies. It is quite possible I became a better navigator on land than at sea!"

The gathered scholars laughed and returned my toast, and it felt good to be among men and women who shared my unquenchable thirst for knowledge. "Once we return with our theories proven we should not only thank Prince Xhandis for giving our voyage his royal blessing," Yasira noted with a smirk on her lips. "We should also send our regards to the exiled princess. Her stubborn dismissal of scholarly endeavors only strengthened Prince Xhandis' approval for them. The sight of her face when she learns about our expedition might just be worth the way to the Singing Stones."

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We had sailed for weeks across azure blue waters when the island of Naath should have come into view, yet where the sandy shores should have been there was nothing at all. I had explained the plotted course with the results of my studies, had said currents and winds suggested we'd find land on the eastern horizon. Now I wondered if I had acted without due consideration. Not much was known about the early history of the Summer Islands, not to people who didn't understand the language of their poems and songs. There was no point of reference from outside events either, no telling which kingdoms had risen or fallen on distant shores. Was it possible that the vision had taken me so far back in time that the island of Naath had not yet emerged? The Valyrian peninsula had been shattered by a great cataclysm. Perhaps similar forces of nature had fractured the Sothoryi coast, and the event that had formed the Basilisk Isles and Naath had not yet occured.

"What a marvelous place you have found!" Eskandhor woke me from my preoccupation. He climbed the stairs to the quarterdeck and joined me on the rail, then pointed in the starboard direction, opposite of where I stared in my futile search for an island. "I have long theorized that the remote ocean must be inhabited by enormous creatures, something entirely different from the sea life we know!" I turned around and held out for what the old man was trying to show me, but there was nothing but the deep-blue ocean and the dazzling light of the afternoon sun. "It would not surprise me if they cause the same winds and currents as a small island!" Eskandhor went on with apparent excitement. "The largest of them might be the size of Stone Head or Abulu!"

When I saw them emerge the sight staggered me and all I could do was stare in terror and awe. The creatures were larger than the whales of the Shivering Sea, and at the same time they didn't resemble these gargantuan beasts at first glance. Though the size of their bodies was only vaguely perceptible in the water, the incredibly long, slender necks clearly set them apart. I had seen giraffes in the menageries of the Free Cities, and it was the closest comparison I could make: the creatures Eskandhor had discovered looked like a crossbreed of leviathans and giraffes, an utterly bizarre yet mesmerizing sight.

"By the love of the goddess!" I heard Suhil and Yasira proclaim from the main deck with one voice, but I still couldn't take my eyes of those marine marvels. What in the world were they? Had we discovered sea dragons? There were myths and legends about these beasts, though nobody had ever seen one with their own eyes. Some claimed all sea dragons went extinct long before the peoples of Westeros built their first ships, others said isolated specimen survived in the far Sunset Sea to the day. Maybe my vision had taken me to a time when they still populated the warm waters around Sothoryos and Naath.

"Can we get any closer?" Yasira stood next to me when I woke from my motionless state, and she sounded only excited, not one bit afraid. "Quick, call the lore singers!" she turned to Suhil before I could answer. "What a great discovery! We must memorize every detail!"

Though the creatures looked frightening, I obliged with her wishes and steered the _Enigma_ closer to them. I didn't have much of a choice as the excitement soon infected every man and woman on board. Artists, priests, poets, and singers crowded the rails, and to my great relief the sea dragons didn't pay us any attention. There were five of them, two notably larger than the others, and the scholars hotly debated the reason for the difference in size. Two fully grown, the three small ones their offspring, some argued. Males and females, others disagreed. I for one had no opinion to offer, I was merely glad the dragons were peaceful and didn't attack.

The spectacle didn't last as long as the scholars and lore singers would have wanted. The dragons submerged after a while and we only saw the inconceivably large outlines disappear under the waves. However, the excitement of the crew didn't die down. On our journey eastwards the debates only grew louder and I was grateful for the distraction. It gave me time to study the stars from my cabin's window, make new estimates when we'd reach the Basilisk Isles or the Sothoryi coast.

Yet we never found either. Just like Naath, neither the landmass of Sothoryos nor its offshore archipelago was where my star charts suggested. There was no land at all, not even desolate rocks or eroded sea stacks. We sailed on and on without catching the slightest glimpse of a shore, and somehow our supplies never dwindled. Rain water filled our barrels, bountiful catches were common in our fishermen's nets, but it struck me as strange that the dried fruit we had taken with us didn't run out. Though it was a good thing that the vision spared us from starvation and illness, my concerns grew the farther we ventured into the eastern sea.

The crew and passengers, however, were still in high spirits. New discoveries kept them occupied and distracted them from their captain's silent apprehension. Types of fish nobody had seen before and cloud patterns that didn't form above the Summer Islands were ever-present and sparked their excitement. Much to the delight of Yasira and her fellow scholars, a sea dragon followed the _Enigma_ for several days, allowing them study its shape and its habits. The creature was smaller than the ones we had seen before, and Yasira surmised it was a calf that mistook the ship for an elder. Her theory was confirmed when the young sea dragon gave up the pursuit upon spotting a group of sky-high necks in the distance. Our masts were runty in comparison, and our companion quickly changed course to rejoin its pod.

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I had adjusted our bearing after finding Sothoryos gone, and I wasn't too surprised when I found New Ghis and the coast of Essos missing as well. At first I had been tempted to reveal the source of my knowledge, tell Yasira that I had been to the lands we were seeking beyond the horizon, but I decided against it. I had to concede that this vision hadn't only taken me to a different time. No, the Goldenheart door had led to a different world altogether. There were no other lands, my memories of them were nothing but falsehoods here. The legends were true, the maps on the Talking Trees of Walano were correct. The Summer Islands and its people were all alone in an ocean that engulfed the entire Known World, and it grew darker, more sinister, the farther we sailed.

_Does she know how far removed we are from her home?_ I wondered when Yasira told me about the latest discoveries she had made. Though the sky and the seas darkened around us, the scholars and poets only seemed more intrigued than before. More than once I had to remind myself that these people had never met other men, that the possibility of being alone was not nearly as disturbing to them as it was to me. The search for lands they never knew should have existed had long been forgotten, and the prospect of other findings now overshadowed the initial quest.

We saw luminous jellyfish swarms in the Cinnamon Straits where Great Moraq should have been, each creature as large as a mid-sized lake. By day they drifted to the surface; amorphous, translucent, barely distinguishable from the water. When the sun faded they submerged to the depth, and only an iridescent, eerie glow remained at their previous position. What I briefly – and foolishly – believed to be the smoke released by the volcanic isles of Marahai turned out to be a pod of unfathomably large whales blowing fountains of water to the sky.

The docile sea dragons became a rare sight when we reached the location of the absent island of Leng. We soon learned why the friendly giants shunned this area - we had entered the breeding grounds of a different, more dangerous kind of beast. Where the sea dragons borrwed the long necks of giraffes, these predators exhibited crocodile-like features. Their bodies were longer and more agile, the size of small whales, and their narrow snouts were lined with short, razor-sharp teeth. And unlike the sea dragons they hunted, these beasts were true monsters, disinclined to leave our ship in peace. Armed with spears, bows, and nets our fishermen now acted as warriors, and even Yasira's unfaltering high spirits flickered in the face of the close encounters our brave vessel endured.

Perhaps fortune truly favors the bold, perhaps the gods of Summer Islands watched over their intrepid explorers. Whichever it was, in the end we escaped this forsaken region. However, the new course had taken us to entirely uncharted waters – uncharted because they didn't exist in my world. Where I knew the Shadow Lands and the Mountains of Morn to be, there was nothing but the wide open sea. The way the stars looked above us was not unfamilar, but hardly translated to our position or course. We had to be northeast of Asshai where the river Ash meandered through the Vale of Shadows, that much I knew, but if those landmarks existed at all they were hidden beneath the black waves.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

While I sat in my cabin, brooding over meaningless calculations and charts, I heard commotion on the quarterdeck above. "We should follow it!" Yasira's voice sounded with the usual cheer, therefore I surmised that no new danger had been discovered. "It is probably moving to safer waters, away from the beasts that prey on us both!" I glanced to the window and instantly knew what she meant. The long, slender neck of a sea dragon had emerged in the distance; an elder, judging by its enormous length. Months ago these creatures had been terrifying and strange, but by now they had become a more than welcome sight to the sailors. Just like us, these giants preferred calm and smooth seas, therefore their presence was almost synonymous with the absence of danger.

I got up from my chair and abandoned the desk; the charts wouldn't tell me anything new, no matter how long I stared. Instead, I strolled to the window to watch the great beast, try to determine where it was heading. A second neck emerged not far from the first one, then a third and now I caught a glimpse of the head. _This is not a sea dragon. _The realization struck me like lightning, and overwhelmed by the shock my limbs wouldn't move. This creature's head didn't have the familiar features, the flat, lizard-like snout barely wider than the smooth neck with the beady, black eyes of a turtle. No, it was wider and shaped like an arrowhead, with slitted eyes, gleaming in an unnatural yellow. A fourth neck emerged, much too close to the others to belong to a different body, then a fifth neck, a sixth one, a seventh, and I finally woke from my motionless state.

The _Enigma_ was now rocking to and fro on wild tides, waves were crashing against the hull and washing over the decks. The voices outside had grown louder as well, became ever more frantic and fearful as the hissing sea beast moved closer. I rushed to the door with only one thing in mind. _Order the crew under deck._ Perhaps it was futile, but perhaps fortune or divine favor would be once more on our side, perhaps unknown currents or a stiff breeze would whisk us away from this monster with too many heads. What else could we do? Only a miracle could save us now. Our spears and arrows would be like insect bites to this creature - if they could pierce the thick, black scales of its necks and heads at all.

The force of a wave shook the ship, I tumbled backwards, and was almost thrown off my feet, but the panicked voices outside spurred me on. The crew needed their captain now more than ever, so I lunged forward, tore the cabin door open and stumbled outside. "Yasira! Suhil!" I shouted, then paused, struck with utter confusion. The beast, the crew, the ship, the waves were not there. Instead, I found myself in an unremarkable chamber, the silver banister of a spiral staircase in front of me standing out as the only notable feature. At first I didn't understand what had happened, but when I turned around and found myself faced with the familiar, locked door of a storeroom, the realization finally set in. The vision had worn off. I had returned to the landing above my chamber and the door behind me wouldn't lead back to the deck of the _ Enigma._


	4. The Crooked Door

The experiences behind the Goldenheart door had left me disturbed, therefore I declined Dareyush's invitation to supper. Instead, I remained alone in my chamber and contemplated what I had seen aboard the _Enigma_. Yes, I knew the voyage across the world-encompassing ocean had been only a vision, but I still needed time to come to terms with its sudden conclusion. What had become of Yasira, Suhil, Eskandhor and the others? Had fortune or gods saved them once more? Was there any truth to the experience, something that translated to the real world? Did beasts like sea dragons still exist in the outer reaches of the oceans? Had they ever existed in the first place or had only the absence of continents and islands allowed them to flourish?

There was certainly no shortage of mysterious bodies of water that only few, if any, sailors had dared to explore. The Shivering Sea stretched out endlessly north of Essos, for instance, and those who had ventured there spoke of ice dragons, some speculated about remote, unknown shores, and many claimed to have seen strange lights in the sky.

The Hidden Sea, albeit a comparatively small inland sea, was shunned by explorers. Not only its unconfirmed nature kept them away, it was also the proximity to the coastal cities that filled them with fear. On the northwestern shore, if the Hidden Sea truly existed, sat the fabled City of the Winged Men. As bizarre as the legends made it out to be, it held no candle to the horrors situated on the southeastern banks. Dark sorcery and blood magic were said to reign in cursed Carcosa, and of the few fearless scholars who went there, not a single one had come back alive. This was not to say that they didn't return at all; many did, but they had never been the same as before. 'Bloodless', 'changed and twisted', 'void of soul', 'gone mad with sinister revelation', those were the words their peers used to describe them. It was quite possible the Hidden Sea was home to strange beasts, and the secret was kept by minds torn asunder.

I was jolted out of my pensive mood when I returned to my chamber after aimlessly wandering the hallways for the first time in what felt like forever. The slender carafe with its alluring, ink-blue content awaited me on the desk, illuminated by the flickering, lone candle. Dareyush was right, I concluded. I shouldn't dwell on a past that had not even been real. "The House of the Undying contains as many possibilities as it contains truths," he had told me in the Garden of Gehane. A world absent lands beyond the Summer Islands had merely been a taste of the former; a thought experiment, so to speak. Invigorated by the realization, I drank my fill of the blue wine, then set out to search for a door that would tickle my fancy.

The hallway I found myself in was not entirely unfamiliar, though my thoughts had been somewhere else when I first encountered it several days ago. The ceilings were higher in this part of the House of the Undying, vaulted and richly decorated with motifs of dragons and sphinxes, and the lighting frequently changed here from bright summer daylight to red-tinted night. Columns stood tall as towers, there were no doors, but impressive gates fit for palaces, guild houses, and temples, and the floor of the wide hallway was made of spectacular, shimmering marble. What caught my eye was a plain, crooked door that looked out of place admist all this splendor. I spotted it in a hidden nook next to a marvelous gate. Embossed white gold, lavishly decorated with onyx and rubies, it was one of many, mundane in its pomp. The door in the nook, on the other hand, was one of a kind. Weathered oak, unpainted, not sitting quite right in its frame. The obvious negligance had me intrigued, and to my relief the tinged, rusty knob didn't crumble under my hand when I opened the door.

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"Galnaz! Don't dawdle! We're going to miss the opening of the market! You can daydream about spending our riches on the way!"

It was sheer coincidence that I met eyes with the man who had called out, evidently to me, and I was too taken aback by the sudden change of my surroundings to answer. I stood on the gangplank of a ship, in front of me lay a small, yet bustling harbor, and to my feet sat a sack of cinnamon, judging by the scent. The man who still impatiently glared at me from the quay was Ghiscari, or had at least lived among them for long enough to pick up their accent. A sturdy fellow with an oiled black beard, older than me by ten years or more, and doubtlessly a sailor by trade.

"Captain Aznon?" another voice drew the man's attention away from me and to the quay, where the speaker guarded a cart loaded with a dozen of barrels. "House Dalanyon asks to purchase all the apricot wine from our hold before we take it to the market. There's a messenger here, saying they're willing to pay twice the regular price!"

Captain Aznon shot me another stern glare and nodded to the sack, still sitting next to me on the gangway. "Does Lady Helyra never learn?" he muttered into his oiled beard, then turned around to his crewman and the barrels. "Twice _which_ price?" he yelled over the noise of the harbor. "That wine is going to auction! There's no telling how much people will pay!"

Playing along with the situation the vision presented, I picked up the sack and carried it down to the quay. I spotted a second cart loaded with more sacks and barrels, guarded by two younger Ghiscari, and since they didn't protest when I approached, I added my own cargo to their pile. "I thank the Graces every day for blessing me with a shrewd captain for once," one of the guards said with a chuckle. "The chump I sailed with on the _Moqqaz_ would have traded away all the wine for a bowl of stew if a silver-haired lady fluttered her eyelashes at him."

The second guard laughed and nodded at that. "Captain Aznon knows there's a good chance a certain silver-haired lord will flutter his purse at the auction," he said. "The last time we brought apricot wine, Lord Maeryon Rahlarys almost fell over himself to get his hands on those barrels. If he caught wind of our arrival, luck ran out for every other potential bidder."

"It is always good to know we'll get paid," I added a hollow phrase to the conversation while looking around, trying to understand where in the world I was. The architecture of the nearby structures was not entirely unfamiliar to me, though I couldn't place it right away. What puzzled me most was the fact that this was a river port. Out of the Ghiscari cities only Astapor and Meereen sat at the mouths of large rivers, but both harbors faced the open ocean of Slaver's Bay.

I paid keen attention to the chatter of my fellow sailors when we led our small caravan of ox carts to the road and traveled further inland along the river. However, the results remained inconclusive as most men were talking about generic, mundane things. The wife of Hadnek expected the birth of their first child, and he couldn't wait to return home for the joyous event. Mornar shared the notion, though there was no family waiting for him, only a plethora of whores he intended to visit. The profits both expected from the upcoming auction put them in a good mood, but the subject didn't give me many hints regarding our destination. There was only one peculiar detail I noticed. Hadnek, Mornar, other sailors, the captain, they spoke of the bidders with a strange blend of disdain and respect.

My surroundings, however, were more generous when it came to clues. The port, I realized, went on and on, larger quays lined the banks, and the further we traveled the more impressive were the vessels anchored on them. We were also joined on the road by more illustrious companions with each ship we passed, finally offering truly familiar sights to my eyes. A crew from Volantis unloaded fine fabrics and spices next to a YiTish vessel with battened, jade-green sails, Summer Islanders disembarked from a swan ship with an abundance of colorful birds, monkeys, and spotted felines in golden cages. There were only few places in the world where these great trade nations convened, and my baffled suspicion was confirmed when the caravan turned westwards. Behind a mountain range the gates and towers of our destination came into view, more dazzling and splendid than I could have ever imagined.

Valyria. What had been devastated by the Doom centuries ago lay now before me, surpassing the glory of its legend. Sky-high, topless towers overlooked the city of marvels, sprawling estates and manses lined the cobbled road that led us through the gate. I hardly knew where to turn my eyes on our way as there were mindboggling wonders all around our procession. Buildings made from smooth black glass, ornate with white marble, gold, silver, and jade. Temples, bathhouses, even taverns and stores displayed statues of sphinxes and dragons. The hallway in the House of the Undying had been a pale shadow of what it evidently tried to mimic, and I was glad to have been cast in the role of an insignificant crewman as the sight of the city left me stunned and in awe.

We reached a wide open market square on top of a slight elevation, and we were by far not the first visitors to arrive. Merchants from every corner of the Known World had already set up tents, pens, and auction stages in preparation for the opening of the market. "I'm glad we're not peddling cattle," Mornar noted when we claimed a small booth on the outskirts. "I hear those beasts are not quite as tame as people say."

I absently nodded along with the notion while covertly watching Hadnek. He was filling flat bowls with spices, and Captain Aznon had ordered me to help him set up the samples. In my role as Galnaz I hadn't received detailed instructions as the captain assumed I knew what to do. "Looking for the jugs?" Hadnek helped me along, then pointed to small crate on the cart when I nodded. The apricot wine. Of course. Though I surmised from the previous conversations that it already had a reputation, handing out samples would attract new potential buyers.

"My brother, Eznas, not the young one, once told me he saw a horse breeder get devoured," Mornar continued while I unloaded the crate with jugs from the cart. "Simply swooped down from the sky and ate the man whole, along with two of his prized Dothraki mounts." As if his words had summoned it, a large shadow passed over the tents of the market and drew my eyes up to the sky.

I almost dropped the crate at what I saw. The majestic outline of a fully grown dragon briefly darkened the sun, then moved out of sight, disappeared somewhere above the black towers of the city. No living man had seen a dragon, not in my world, not a real beast of flesh, blood, and fire. Even the last dragon of House Targaryen, who had escaped the Doom to western shores, had perished long before my father's generation had been born. All that was left of these beasts were paintings, statues, carvings, and legends. None of my companions shared my amazement though. They were used to the sight of fearsome silhouette in the sky, to them Valyria had never fallen.

There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more than to explore this grand city, seek out its libraries and archives, unravel the mysteries lost forever under brimstone and ashes, yet the vision had denied me this opportunity from the start. Before the Doom the tables had been turned on the Ghiscari. Today, in the world I knew, they were the slavers. The world of my vision, however, showed me the fabled Freehold at its height, a time when the Ghiscari were the slaves to their Valyrian masters. It was not a coincidence or the late arrival that had denied my ship a quay closer to the gates of the city. No, the less cumbersome docks had been reserved for the free. In my role as the lowborn Galnaz of New Ghis I wasn't allowed to roam the streets on my own. I was confined to the market, far away from archives and lost secrets.

And so I spent the day handing out samples of apricot wine to silver-haired nobles. During my brief respite before the auction I sat down on the edge of a marble fountain and enjoyed the cooling shade of flowering trees. Chatted to fellow merchant sailors from Ghiscar, Volantis, Mantarys, and Lys, listened to the latest gossip and rumors. Dreamt of exploring the heart of the city, unearthing knowledge that would remain forever lost in my world. Cursed my spontanous descision to go through the crooked door. Had I entered this vision through the ornate gate next to it, I would surely have been assigned the identity of a Valyrian lord.

Perhaps there was a lesson to be learned here, I thought. How easily proud empires could rise and fall if they overestimated their power, how the lines of history blurred between masters and slaves. One choice born out of hubris – or five, in the case of the Ghiscari - could seal the fate, and former nobles found themselves on the less desirable end of the chain.

Captain Aznon's spices found buyers all through the day. Cinnamon, ginger, and coriander were sold in small bags, and our supply was exhausted before the appointed hour of the auctions. When it approached, the market changed quite considerably. I could sense a new kind of tension in the warm afternoon air. Customers in more elaborate robes now appeared, replacing the house slaves and lowborn merchants. Larger quantities and higher sums would change hands soon, and the wealthy elite of Valyria didn't leave these transactions to their servants.

As the captain had predicted, Lord Maeryon Rahlarys, a brash young noble in blood-red robes, was the first bidder who showed interest in our barrels of wine. However, Lady Helyra Dalanyon made her appearance as well, and the stern, older woman didn't grant an easy victory to her rival. Other prospective buyers retreated once the bidding began, and neither Lord Rahlarys nor Lady Dalanyon backed down from their intention of purchasing the entire cargo. To the captain's dismay, this didn't translate to higher profits as the nobles preferred yelling and insulting each other to increasing their bids. In the end Lord Rahlarys left their battle as the victor, though it had little to do with his business acumem or wealth. He had threatened to expose some kind of lewd indiscretion that concerned Lady Helyra to the public, only to admit after her departure that he didn't know of such a thing. Accordingly, Captain Aznon's mood had steadily decreased during the impertinent ordeal, and he was eager to set sail once all barrels had been loaded onto Lord Rahlarys' carts.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

The road along the river quays was almost deserted, apparently we were among the first merchants to leave. Only a lone Summer Islander sat on the rail of the swan ship, whistling and trying to teach the large, green-feathered bird on his arm a new song. "You did well on your first market," the captain turned to me once we reached our ship. "Frankly, I'm always hesitant to take new lads along. Not many sailors have the tact for business, most are too gruff to handle our 'distinguished masters' and their whims." He gave me a slap on the back and nodded to the gangplank. "Good crewmen are hard to come by these days. If you're interested, I'd like to discuss a more long-term arrangement. My sailmaster thinks about retirement from the sea, and you might be suited to take his position in a year or two."

It was strange hearing a Ghiscari propose such negotiations and bemoan a lack of good workers. In the Ghiscari cities I knew captains simply purchased slaves with the required skills, and I had never heard about there being a shortage of them. But with the slave trade firmly in Valyrian hands, the conquered Ghiscari had to think of other solutions. Considering the length of time I had spent in my previous visions, I accepted Captain Aznon's invitation to his cabin. A stable position on a merchant ship wouldn't hurt whether I would stay here for weeks, months or years. I'd see more of the world, perhaps even return to Valyria and gain further insights into the customs of the lost culture.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

"Curse those seaquakes!" Captain Aznon just barely caught a handful of pieces of our board game when the ship violently rocked to and fro. We had concluded our negotiations to our mutual satisfaction, agreeing that I would serve in my current position until the sailmaster decided to retire or not. Now we were engaged in a game of Qozzit, similar to cyvasse albeit with much simpler rules, and the heavy sea didn't make easy for us. "They've been getting worse in the past few months," the captain continued with unveiled annoyance. "Is it any surprise I have such a hard time hiring new crew?" With a sigh he got up and grabbed his far-eye from a shelf, then strode to the window to peer out into the night.

Another tremble threw the board and its pieces off the table just when I was about to reply to the rhetoric question. "I've heard sailors speak of heavy seas in the taverns," I got out before the force of the wave toppled both me and the chair I had sat on over.

"This can't be," Captain Aznon muttered, the annoyance gone from his voice and replaced with utter terror. "Galnaz, quick! Take a look!" He wildly gestured with his free hand, beckoning me to come over. Once I was back on my feet I rushed to the window, and the captain shoved the far-eye into my hands. "What are those strange colors tinting the moon? And what in the world is the cause of that rumbling?"

I had an incredibly dreadful apprehension, and it only got stronger when I peered through the lens. The gibbous moon was shrouded in bizarre, unnatural clouds; shades of green and azure rising up as ghostly vapors. Under our feet, under the ship, under the waves the sea trembled, accompanied by an increasingly terrifying sound. A roaring and moaning, but it not come from a beast. Even the sea dragons I had encountered in my previous vision were much too small to produce noises of this volume and reach, and what we heard sounded as if the world in its entirety was being shattered from deep within. Charcoal smoke rose on the horizon, black ashes rained down from the sky, and I could only surmise that both originated on the Valyrian peninsula, about eight leagues in the west from our current position.

"The Fourteen Flames..." I muttered. "They're erupting..." It was all I could say before Captain Aznon took back the far-eye and rushed to the door.

"We need to get out of here," he said, his voice stern and haunted. "The closer we are to the shore, the larger the wave will be when it hits us." He tore the cabin door open and frantically gestured outside." Tell the crew to set a new course for Tryos. We won't make it to Astapor, but hopefully we can wait out the worst near the Isle of Cedars."

"No!" I yelled over the incessant rumbling and grumbling as I followed the captain out onto the deck, almost stumbling over loose ropes and on slippery, wet ash with each step. Thoughts were spinning in my mind; memories, calculations, knowledge from another world and time. Ghozai and Velos, the two major ports on the Isle of Cedars, had been devastated by the Doom, and Tryos, sitting on the small islet in its western bay, had gotten the worst of the impending destruction. "The storm favors Ghaen!" I justified my protest, though I couldn't tell which way the winds were blowing amidst this chaos.

Captain Aznon paused and thought for a moment, his eyes surveying the ash piling up on deck with growing concern. "Change course to New Ghis then. We'll keep a skeleton crew on deck to shovel the ashes," he finally said. "The men of the night shift just volunteered for the task. You take everyone else under deck and see that they stay there." He sighed deeply and glared to the steering wheel on the quarterdeck. "The volunteers will join you once I spot the wave rolling toward us."

"What about you?" I asked, but when I saw the captain's face it was enough of an answer.

"I'll negotiate with the storm," he gravely gave back, sighed again, and began climbing the slippery rungs of the ladder. "Pray that my wits won't fail me," he added without turning around. "Pray to every god you can think of."

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

It was the most terrifying night of my life, penned in under deck with the frightened crewmen. The world roared and trembled around us, sailors prayed, and I knew a new era was beginning outside. History was taking its course and I was its witness, unbeknownst to my Ghiscari companions. Valyria in all its splendor would be gone in the morning, and in the Doom's wake Astapor, Yunkai, Meereen, and New Ghis would flourish, though their empire would never rise to old glory again. Their descendants would forget the centuries of subjugation, would call themselves 'masters', would buy and sell slaves. The Century of Blood would sweep across the Known World and its seas, wars would be fought, would shape the Essos I remembered.

When the heavy swell finally subsided and I cautiously opened the hatch, a day without dawn awaited me and my fellow crewmen. Ashes and ink-black coulds obscured the sky, shrouding the morning in a grey, dusky twilight. Captain Aznon sat on the quarterdeck, exhausted beyond human limits, the rope he had tied himself with to the steering wheel still loosely wrapped around his body. He turned his head when he noticed commotion by the hatch, and watched his sailors emerge from their shelter with an incredulous smile.

I leaned back against the wall next to the door, let the crewmen rush out to aid their couragous captain. Took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and sorted my thoughts, prepared myself to enter a brandnew and at the same time old, familiar world. Yet when I stepped through the door I found myself in a different place, a place also familiar and changed beyond recognition. The marble floor, the pompous columns, the ornate gates, everything I had seen on the hallway was now crackling and charred. The crooked door that had not sat quite right in its frame had turned into nothing but a pile of black ashes, and instead of a passage there was just another soot-stained wall in the House of the Undying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't gift individual chapters, but this is for RuffedLemur: something about Old Valyria. 
> 
> The cause of the Doom is left mysterious on purpose, though my headcanon says it was a literal 'inside job' - firewyrms burrowing into the wrong areas, and the dragons (bred from firewyrms and wyverns) being used for conquest instead of their original purpose ('fighting fire with fire' pest control). 
> 
> The chapter was mostly inspired by the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa (especially Captain Aznon, who is based upon the real life Captain Lindemann).


	5. The Opaque Door

Dareyush seemed intrigued when I recounted what I had seen in my vision, though I couldn't be certain. His foreign features remained hard to read, and it was equally possible that my tale almost bored him to tears. "The Doom of Valyria, of course," he said when we sat in his chamber. "It is a puzzle many seek to solve in the Palace of Dust."

"Have others seen the same things I saw?" I inquired. "Are there records that describe their visions, perhaps?" The world I had found behind the Goldenheart door had not been mine, but nothing in Valyria had indicated a divergence from the past I knew to be real. Records had been lost in the Doom, but that didn't mean these things never happened. There was a chance that some accounts had survived, somehow, somewhere, and could confirm or disprove the truth of my vision. The House of the Undying held arcane and obscure knowledge, things that were shunned, often feared, elsewhere in the world. If those records existed, it was likely I'd find them in the warlocks' archives.

Yet Dareyush undecidedly, maybe indifferently, shrugged. "There are no records," he said over the brim of his glass. "Visions change, there is no point in writing them down. Many things are true only for fractions of moments, fleeting truths that turn into lies within the blink of an eye. However..." He drank another sip, then slowly sat the glass down on the table, keeping me in suspense. "I recall a scholar who came here many years before you were born. She had a great interest in Valyrian secrets, and the House of the Undying led her to the same door you stepped through."

"Did she tell you what she found on the other side?" I hastily asked. "Did she meet Captain Aznon? Did she witness the Doom?" The fall of Valyria was a puzzle that had plagued many scholars for centuries, and the notion that someone might be able to corroborate my observations was exciting.

"I never spoke to her myself," Dareyush curbed my enthusiasm. "My mentor told me about her visits on occasion, though he never went into detail regarding the vision." He reached for the carafe, curled his long, slender fingers around the crystal neck as if to caress it. "The name 'Captain Aznon' has a familiar ring though," Dareyush continued, now sounding more thoughtful. "I believe there used to be a play troupes performed in Yunkai or New Ghis, perhaps the Free Cities." The ink-blue liquid became more vivid as it was poured into the clear glass, sparkling in the flickering light of the hearth.

"What about Galnaz, the man whose identity I assumed?" My eyes rested on the now filled glass in his hand. "Are there any mentions of him in plays, songs or legends? Did he exist? Did he make a difference, convinced the captain to sail south instead of plotting a course to the island of Tryos?"

Dareyush shrugged again and took a sip from his drink. "The play told the tale of a courageous sailor, that is all I know. I couldn't say if there was any connection to the Doom, or what kind of characters the mummers portrayed, other than the titular Aznon." He paused and regarded me for a long moment, then he pushed the carafe closer to me. "Every seeker has to find his or her own truth, and only the House of the Undying can answer your questions."

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

My path seemed obvious after this conversation. I had to find a door that would lead me to another vision, one that would shed light on the aftermath of the Doom. Clues I could follow up in New Ghis or Yunkai one day; names maybe, ancestors of Captain Aznon, Galnaz or members of their crew. And so I began my new quest after my fill of the blue wine, wandered the hallways in search of a door that might possibly take me to a Ghiscari city. Yet wherever I went I did not see any harpies, no pyramids, nothing with a connection to Slaver's Bay. Did the House of the Undying judge me as unready for the revelations I might find? Did a door or vision with the hints I hoped for simply not exist at all?

_Iluma Ayon. _The stray thought struck my mind like lightning when I crossed a pendant bridge above a fluorescent ocean. If a play had been written about Captain Aznon, the grey city would remember. Months, maybe years, had passed since my visit. It was entirely possible I'd find the fossilized door in its old place after such a long time. Excited by the idea I made my way through the maze, yet when I reached the vaulted gallery I was once more disappointed. The passage to Iluma Ayon had not reappeared, there were no doors at all between the ornate columns.

Just when I was about to return to my chambers in defeat, I noticed that something had changed in the gallery since I had last seen it. The banister in the hall's center looked different, had become the unremarkable handrail of a spiral staircase, leading downwards into a ghostly lit room. It almost resembled the ambience one would see when submerged in dark water, hazy flecks of lights glimmering above the surface. Intrigued, I descended the stairs and found a round chamber, empty except for a single door, barely recognizable as such in the dark. The fascinating play of light emanated from it, though it didn't become brighter when I went closer.

The air felt colder in front of the door. Fittingly, the window the pale green-blue shone through appeared to be covered with fern frost. Perhaps it was not glass, but a pane of thin ice, I pondered as I ran my fingers across it to wipe away some of the fog. There was movement on the other side of the opaque pane, and I hastily cleared a larger peep hole with my hands. Previous doors hadn't given me any hints regarding the nature of the visions behind them, therefore I found the opportunity quite intriguing. What I saw when I peeked through my window into another world was the most beautiful sight I had ever beheld, surpassing even the marvelous architecture of Valyria at its height.

Nacreous shadows, fluorescent shapes in every shade of the rainbow, scurrying about through the dark in a peaceful winter night. The ghostly beings resembled the jellyfish I had seen in my vision of the lonesome Summer Islands; luminous, translucent, otherwordly, though more varied in size and shape. Their amorphous, glowing outlines seemed to be drifting on air currents, yet at the same time they moved with incomprehensible purpose. Below them, reflections of their iridescent colors glimmered faintly on the undisturbed snow.

My investigations about Captain Aznon, Valyria, and the aftermath of its fall were instantly chased from my thoughts by this mesmerizing sight. What were these beings, if the floating shapes were alive? Will-o'-the-wisps? Spirits freed from the constraints of their mortal bodies? A higher form of existence, something certain sects of YiTish sorcerers claimed could be achieved through fasting and meditation? I just had to find out what awaited me in this vision, couldn't pass on a chance to experience the world from such a peculiar perspective.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

The door fell shut behind me with a crescendo of shattering ice, and my fascination gave way to confused disenchantment. I stood alone on the snow-covered plain, no shimmering shapes filled the air around me. Where had they gone? How had they vanished so quickly? Had my sudden appearance startled them and chased them to a nearby hideout? I whirled around and took in my surroundings, but there was nothing that could hide a swarm of luminous beings near or far. Behind me stood a rickety hut, barely taller or wider than its door. I peered through the gaps between the weather-worn planks, but unsurprisingly the interior, the size of a privy, appeared to be empty. It was the only structure on the plain though, therefore I opened the door to inspect it further. Bark and splinters of wood were scattered about on the frozen dirt floor, the broken helve of an axe leaned against a wall. The last remains of a logging camp, I concluded. I had seen the snow-crowned tips of firs in the distance, the forest had likely expanded in this direction some time ago.

I had no trace of the shimmering shapes, but the presence of the abandoned hut gave me hope to find people - and with them food and shelter, which I would certainly need in this inhospitable vision. The forest held the most promise to me, so I began my march in this direction. The freezing cold was creeping under my robes though only a mild breeze blew, but fortunately the night was not as dark as it could have been. A full moon stood high under the starry sky and illuminated my way across the snowy plain.

As I came closer to the treeline I picked up the scent of salt in the air, and above the forest I saw columns of smoke billowing up to the sky. The faint sounds of rushing water suggested a coastline, a fishing village, or perhaps a small port, I surmised. The thought of a warming hearth hastened my steps, and I soon spotted a trampled path leading up snowy hills where it continued as a wide swathe through the forest.

Once I had reached the highest point where the forest was lighter, I found a sight as unexpected as welcome ahead. I stood on a rocky ledge, overlooking a settlement much larger than the scattered columns of smoke had suggested. Wooden huts and tents made from leather and fur stood nestled together below the steep cliff, a long line of rocks hinted at a wall in the early stages of construction, and a row of wooden piers extended from the shore into the bay. I was also not trapped on the elevation, I realized as I cautiously peered over the edge. There was a wooden structure just below, a winch elevator to lower timber into the valley and lift the woodcutters up to the ledge. However, nobody was manning the winch at nighttime, therefore I had to resort to a ramshackle rope ladder the constructors probably used for repairs.

The descend on slippery rungs and ropes stiff with hoarfrost was not pleasant, but I reached the foot of the steep cliff unharmed. A work area awaited me here: stacks of timber stored under snow-covered awnings, a shed that probably housed tools or served as a carpenter's shop. Further back, outside the gaping mouth of a cavern, stood a collection of stacked buckets and small carts. Due to the thin layer of snow I assumed they had been recently used, perhaps ore was mined in the cave or there was a nearby quarry.

Maybe the vision had led me to Ib, I thought as I walked across the yard toward the first row of wooden houses. The northernmost place my travels had taken me to was the city of Lorath, but the climate there had not been nearly this harsh. It stood to reason that I had crossed the Shivering Sea by stepping through the windowed door, and there were only few shores to choose from. Ib was the obvious one; the island was mountainous and known for trading in gold, iron, and lumber. Skagos was another possibility. I only knew little about it, but the descriptions I remembered matched my current surroundings. And lastly, there were the lands beyond Westeros' wall, which I had never visited, yet read about a bit in the past.

Light flickered through the curtains and boarded up windows of some houses, and faint voices could be heard as well. I approached what appeared to be a public building of some sort, perhaps a townhall, judging by its size and central location. Previous visions had disguised my appearance, therefore I was confident that I would not stand out as strange and foreign if I made my presence known right away. I boldly opened the door and entered what looked like the common room of a tavern.

Despite the late hour, there was a small crowd gathered inside. About a dozen men and women, all dressed in thick layers of leather and fur, occupied the benches of a long table in front of a hearth. Various weapons; spears, swords, clubs, and axes, leaned against the wall by the door, ready to be picked up quickly in the event of a sudden attack. Some of the people held mugs, and there were a few empty platters on the table, but the absence of a counter suggested I had entered a guardhouse instead of a tavern.

The chatter fell silent and a dozen heads unanimously swiveled around as the creaking of the door alerted the group to my arrival. I didn't know as who or what they perceived me, therefore I remained quiet and simply stared back. They were not Ibbenese, that much I had gathered by now. Even seated they were too tall, and their complexions were lighter than common for men of Ib.

"Maddulf!"

Though the woman looked gruff and battle-hardened, her voice was soft and colored with great relief. She stood up and gestured toward me, beckoning me to come over and take a seat. "Wake Bogdor and Varyna!" she turned to another woman as I followed the invitation and made my way to the bench. "Do you remember Firfrost?" She looked back to me, uncertain expectation in her ashen eyes.

"Firfrost?" I sat down across from her, between two men, while the younger woman hastily left the room through a tattered curtain. Maybe someone would give me a hint if I kept my answers brief, at least clue me in whether 'Firfrost' was a place, a person or something else altogether.

"He doesn't remember a thing," the man to my right spoke up, surly resignation tinting his words. "Just like the others. And what is there to remember? The scouts saw a false dawn, and ashes fell from the sky for a fortnight." He grabbed his mug and placed it in front of me, but kept glaring at the woman. "Firfrost is gone. The light took it."

The woman was about to interject, but the man to my left got there first. "Sowa, we all share your pain," he began, softer and calmer than the previous speaker. "But let us not fool ourselves. We've seen this play out a hundred times over. Whitetree, Wolfsgrove, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. And now Firfrost." He paused and drank a swig from his mug. "Your son is lucky to have found the way to Hardhome all by himself." The man gave me a matey slap on the back. "I know, it must be confusing to not understand what we're on about," he said, and I instinctively nodded my agreement. "The light, it takes away all you know. Not only your home and your people, it also takes what's in your head."

"Those who survive the takings roam the night in fear and confusion," a man sitting across from me, next to Sowa, went on to explain. Judging by the tone of his voice, this was by far not the first time he was involved in this exact conversation. "Most perish from cold, hunger or both, not knowing their own names or where they came from. A lucky few are fortunate enough to wander home without knowing it, most often hunters or scouts. Your mind may have forgotten, but your feet remembered the way."

The tattered curtain moved and the younger woman returned to the table, accompanied by the two people she had gone to fetch. The man was exceptionally tall, close to seven feet, perhaps even taller, dwarfing the wrinkly, aged woman next to him. Just like the group at the table he wore leather armor, but the impressive cloak made from furs of various beasts and the ornate jerkin made him stand out. By now, I had surmised that I was north of the Wall, yet it still surprised me to see somebody who could pass for a giant. The old woman, on the other hand, conjured up a more familiar association. Wrapped in layers of fur and wearing a necklace with an assortment of teeth, bones, and claws, she reminded me of the wood witches native to Mossovy. It was unlikely she really hailed from the remote forests of the Far East, but my instinct told me she possessed some kind of magic.

The odd pair was introduced as Bogdor, Hardhome's chieftain, and Varyna, his advisor and the settlement's last living warg. It was not entirely clear to me what the term meant, though I surmised it described some kind of shaman. There were many things in the following conversation that reamained unclear, and I was glad nobody expected me to understand what was said. As Ignat and Radim, the men sitting next to me, had proposed, people assumed I was a scout by the name of Maddulf who had survived the 'taking' of Firfrost. Who or what had taken the village, however, was not stated and after listening for a while, I inquired about the attacker with my best guess.

"There's a vast emptiness in my head and it is quite disconcerting," I began. "Please, jog my memory. Who attacked the village? Wild beasts, rangers of the Night's Watch? I truly cannot recall a single thing."

A long silence followed as if time had suddenly frozen in the building. Bogdor exchanged a quizzical glance with his shaman, then he turned to me. "The Night's Watch?" he echoed in disbelief. "Old friend, your memories are more jumbled than you'll ever know..."

"There has not been a Night's Watch since Westwatch-by-the-Bridge fell," Varyna took over. Her voice was small and brittle, making her seem even older than she looked, a stark contrast to her emerald eyes gleaming with vigilance in the shine of the fire. "The last ranger died almost two thousand years before I was born. Nobody lives in those castles anymore, not since the light chased the Umber from Eastwatch twenty-three years ago." She nodded to Bogdor, and the chieftain's stern facade visibly crackled under the weight of her words. "All that remains of the Wall now belongs to the light. There are too few of us left to ever hope to reclaim it."

"The Wall has fallen?" I muttered, more to myself. The little I knew about Westeros, the Wall, and its guardians apparently held no truth in this vision, and what Varyna had said only puzzled me more. "But how? Eighteen strongholds, seven hundred feet of ice, and powerful enchantments... What mighty foe has emerged after the Long Night ended?"

Again, quizzical glances were exchanged, and this time it was Bogdor who went on to explain. "The Long Night never ended," he plainly said. "The sun hasn't risen in eight thousand years. Of the seven castles Brandon Stark began to construct, only five were ever completed and all of them fell. There's no telling whether the Wall was ever as high as you say, but the enchantments have never been more than legends." He walked around the table and put a hand on my shoulder. "The things you must have witnessed at Firfrost have taken quite a toll on your mind. Perhaps you should rest now. Your mother and your wife..." He paused and nodded to Sowa and the younger woman, realizing I had no idea who he was talking about. "They will answer more questions tomorrow."

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

And so I spent the night in the house of a stranger, with two women I didn't know sitting watch in room. Since I found no sleep, I had some time to evaluate my situation. I hadn't known much about the lands beyond the Wall to begin with, but even the little I knew was not true in this world. Oksany, my – or Maddulf's – wife told me that Skagos had fallen in recent years. Neither she nor Sowa had ever heard of Ib, and ships from Braavos and Lorath had stopped coming several decades ago. News from what I knew as the Seven Kingdoms were sparse, though there were strongholds similar to Hardhome in the south. This knowledge was owed to Varyna's 'green dreams', an ability that allowed her to see distant places through the faces carved into weirwood trees. However, settlements were 'taken' or relocated, moved away from the ancient trees and out of her sight.

"There are no kings or queens in this world," Oksany quietly answered one more of my questions when she returned to me with some bread and ale. Sowa had retired to her bed in the opposite corner of the room, therefore we spoke in whispers to not disturb her sleep. "What you recall are tales you heard as a boy. Every mother tells her children about great castles, the lords and ladies living within them, the day we'll wake to a new spring. But it is only make-believe, planting seeds of a hope that will never come to true." She sighed and brushed the thick, blonde braids back over her shoulder. "The only truth in this world is the light, and the only hope is that it won't take us next."

"The light. I believe I have seen it," I confessed, uncertain if I had drawn the correct conclusions. "I saw strange, glowing creatures in the wind, and they were gone all of a sudden when I looked again."

"A trick of the eye." Oksany nodded. "What you saw were their shadows cast on the white snow. Sometimes it appears as if you can make out their true shapes from the distance, but when you look closely there's nothing at all."

"What are they?" I inquired. "Where do they come from?"

Oksany shrugged and drank a sip from my ale. "Legends say they came with the frost. The wrath of the lost summer, burning ghosts, eidoley, nightflames. They have many names, but no past, no history known to man. All we know is that they haunt a world where the sun never rises, and that they have done so for thousands of years."

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

Morning came without dawn. Instead a dusky twilight lingered in the bay, barely brighter than the wan moon that had led me here. During the first few days I rarely left my – Maddulf's – house, and helped Sowa and Oksany with the preparation of food. Fish and roots, seal meat and blubber, the diet was bland and monotonous to me, but the denizens of Hardhome didn't know it any other way. They had never tasted the sweet fruit of spring nor the splendor of summer, had never sown crops to reap rich harvests in the warm winds of autumn.

However, Sowa and Oksany did not merely cook stews and soups for the three of us. Large quantities were brought out to the miners who worked tirelessly in the caverns. Hardhome's efforts to create a web of tunnels had been inspired by a 'green dream', a settlement Varyna had seen farther south. The structures above ground had long been abandoned, yet people had found shelter in the subterranean parts of Mole's Town, as they called it. "The light needs the snow," Sowa had explained. "It cannot venture where it casts no reflection. The snow won't stop falling, but it can't follow us into the mountain."

And so the people of Hardhome dug, carved out new tunnels and connections between the natural caverns. Used the ore they found to forge tools and dig deeper, created a refuge where snow would never touch the ground, an eternal false summer hidden deep in the mountain.

Once I had regained my strength, I joined a group of miners led by Ignat and his brother. Neither of them ever spoke of Firfrost or the experiences people believed I had lived through. I only learned much later what the significance of the nearby village had been. Located in the heart of the Haunted Forest, it had supplied much of the wood used in Hardhome's constructions after the camp I had found upon my arrival had been exhausted. The destruction of Firfrost had not only caused a shortage of timber though. It also meant the loss of six hundred people; their woodcutters, scouts, and haulers had been meant to populate caves that would now remain empty. Still, we were making good progress. Though the caverns didn't offer much comfort yet, Varyna's dream steadily took shape in the rock. Bogdor estimated that the first settlers would abandon their houses in favor of these new accomodations within two or three months.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

"Maddulf! Wake up! Hurry!"

Oksany's frantic voice tore me out of my slumber, hard-earned after a long day in the mines. I looked around in my sleepy daze, but it didn't take long until I realized something in our house had changed.

"Hurry! Take all the food you can carry! Bodgor called everyone to the caverns, your mother is already on her way there!"

It was _bright_. A surreal, iridescent light flooded the room, the same nacreous play of colors I had seen just before I had entered this vision.

I was on my feet in an instant, grabbed my cloak from the hook near the bed, and rushed to the pantry. Oksany quickly followed and we blindly gathered anything in our arms' reach; a handful of roots, a string of smoked eels, two jugs of ale, the last of our blubber. When we stumbled out through the main door and onto the street, we were met with panicked screams and a terrifyingly beautiful sea of light. People were running toward the cliff and its caverns, shielding their eyes from the brightness with hands, arms, and whatever they carried.

"We need to find my mother!" I yelled to Oksany, a few steps ahead. There was an ominous presence somewhere behind me, and just for one heartbeat I dared to turn around, dared to look at the sea. The entire bay was ablaze with light, shimmering in every shade of the rainbow. The night's brightest star, moving toward the coastline just beneath the cold waves, that was what I saw, opalescent shadows of beings invisible to my eyes.

"Maddulf!" Once more, Oksany's voice jolted me out of my mesmerization, and I felt her hand grab my wrist. "Quick, we need to get away from the coast!" She pulled me toward the cliff, and we ran and we stumbled, but we reached the saving entrance of the nearest cave. Exhausted, I stopped for a moment, then followed my wife through the leather curtain, and when it fell closed behind me, I breathed out in relief. We were surrounded by comforting darkness that would keep us safe.

"We made it!" I gasped. This was not the resonance of a large cavern, I realized, my voice had echoed in a small room. A round room without any notable features, save for a flight of winding stairs leading to a gallery in the House of the Undying. 


	6. The Umbral Door

"Sometimes one reality bleeds into another, the lines between different truths are often opaque." Dareyush's spindly fingers scraped the leather of the tome as he returned it to its place on the shelf. "It is incredibly rare that something so drastic seeps through, of course, but it isn't entirely unheard of either."

I followed him down the aisle to the winding stairs, leading to the library's lowest floor. "So it is possible that the strange lights I saw were responsible for Hardhome's destruction? What other cases have there been? Anything that compares in nature or scope?" No answer came, and I tried again. "Mysteries that went unsolved for hundreds of years, but could be explained by bleeding realities through visions later?"

The warlock's steps echoed under the vaulted ceiling as he strode across the reflective marble floor, then he abruptly stopped in the library's center and turned around. "Maybe," he said with an air of annoyance. "It has been theorized that these mergings can occur, however, it is not my field of expertise. If you wish to devote your studies to this subject..." He spread out his arms, pointing in no particular direction. "The library is at your disposal."

Anger burgeoned in me. The library, on most days resembling an enormous, round tower, held thousands of tomes. Without more specific information, where would I even begin? It had taken me days to find the tome written by Maester Wyllis, his account about the customs of Hardhome before its destruction. How would I find books about things that may have happened somewhere, somehow, somewhen, without knowing what kind of event I was looking for in the first place? Talking to Dareyush had become rather frustrating, and this conversation surpassed our previous ones in this regard. He seemed bored and irritated today, his answers were as evasive and empty as ever. And instead of providing reflection and guidance himself, he assigned the library to fill the role of my mentor. Did he truly expect me to dig through mountains of tomes on my own?

Apparently so. Our brief meetings during the following weeks didn't aid my studies either, and I resigned to wandering the aisles of the library instead after a while. Perhaps a book would stand out in some way, like doors had called out to me in the hallways, I hoped. Yet no such thing happened. The tomes remained silent and gave me no clues. Here and there I took one and flipped through the pages, but not a single one could hold my attention for long. Accounts of travels to familiar places, descriptions of various cultures, abstract concepts. Observations of wildlife, the metaphysical properties of certain plants, star charts and maps of lands near and far. Truths already known and widely accepted, no mysteries, no maybes, no new insights or solutions.

Numbed by boredom and annoyance with the mundane, I decided to try my luck with Dareyush once again. If he wouldn't provide answers, perhaps it was time for a new riddle to ponder. Another door, another vision, another experience to occupy my idle mind. Yet when I entered his chambers at the appointed time, I found a note instead of Dareyush. He had 'urgent matters' to attend to; an envoy from Kayakayanaya had arrived earlier than the warlocks had expected.

The impertinence. Whoever these guests were, they were fleeting like all the others. They'd spend a short time in the House of the Undying, a few days to trade, exchange news and hearsay, then they would move on. Why did they take precedence over a true seeker all of a sudden? Any acolyte could have dealt with their business in Dareyush's stead! There was no need for him to postpone, perhaps even call off our meeting in their favor. My patience has long run out, and I certainly wouldn't wait around until Dareyush decided to grace me with his fickle attention. If he didn't want to guide me – fine, I'd find my own way to new insights.

The carafe on his desk had caught my eye from the moment I had set foot in his chamber. An ink-blue key, patiently waiting for me in the lock of another mysterious door. I tore up the note and let its shred rain down on the table, then looked around in the room for a glass. Dareyush had not been called away on short notice, I realized. He hadn't prepared for our meeting, hadn't set glasses out, hadn't lit the candles, hadn't brought any tomes. No, he had known all along that he would be gone by the time I got here. Seething with rage, I rushed to the table, grabbed the carafe and drank my fill straight from it.

Maybe it was my state of mind, maybe the larger quantity I gulped down, maybe both played a part in the dizziness I felt after slamming the empty carafe down on the table. It only lasted for one intense, yet brief moment before sudden alertness and ardor replaced it. In my agitation I had not considered which door I would open, but I trusted my instinct to make the right choice. And so I left Dareyush's chamber and roamed the hallways, spurred on by a zealous thirst for discovery.

I don't recall what hallways I passed through on my way. The Shade of the Evening guided me somewhere, I could feel it, an invisible pull from no particular direction. But when I stood before the door at the end of a sandstone tunnel, I knew I had arrived at my destination. I recalled seeing the tunnel entrance during my exploration of the House of the Undying, though I had never walked into it. There were no candles or lanterns on the walls, therefore I hadn't seen the door; it was hidden in shadows. However, I had no doubt that the vision I was meant to see lay behind it, therefore I opened the door without hesitation.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

I was surprised to find myself stepping out onto a sunlit plaza, teeming with life and cheerful chatter. The shadowy, hidden nature of the door had suggested a more sinister setting, certainly something other than a busy bazaar. Yet this was exactly what stretched out before me. Market stalls and colorful awnings lined sandstone buildings, the excited voices of barkers announced auctions, aides handed out samples to customers on every corner.

Unlike in previous visions, nobody approached me, therefore I had the time to survey my surroundings and figure out where I was. This was a prosperous place and a fairly large one at that – a city, not a temporary settlement of traveling traders. People wore wide robes in light colors and soft buckskin boots, the attire of the nomads roaming the grasslands along the banks of the Sarne. Paired with the swarthy tone of their skin, the accent I heard all around, and the architecture of the impressive sandstone buildings I had no doubt. The hidden door had led me to the Kingdom of Sarnor, to a time before most of its splendid cities had been destroyed. I had once visited Saath, the last remaining city, during my travels, and I recognized certain features of the Sarnori style here. Saath was a fairly small port town though, I recalled, too small to house a bazaar of this size. No, the vision had taken me somewhere, somewhen else. This was Mardosh, Kyth or Sathar, and it was the glory of Sarnor at its height.

Apparently I blended in with the crowd, which didn't strike me as odd. After all I hadn't stood out as foreign in other visions either, so I strolled around, inspected market stalls, observed sellers and buyers, collected impressions of a kingdom long lost. However, after a while I paid more attention to the behavior of the people around me. Merchants and their aides eagerly approached their potential clients. They began chatting whenever somebody came close to their stalls, they offered samples, they called out to passers-by. I, on the other hand, went ignored. Nobody held a tray with candied fruit or baked goods out to me, nobody rushed over when I browsed the wares. Did I appear to be poor? Did they think I couldn't afford the goods on display, that making a pitch to me would be a waste of their time? But wouldn't they try to shoo me away in this case? Merchants were wary of thieves and beggars on any given market, and I didn't see why it would be different here. Maybe I appeared as a noble instead, somebody too wealthy, too important to be pestered? There was only one way to find out.

I looked around and spotted a stall that sold jewelry and gemstones nearby. Only few people were gathered under its awning, and I surmised not many had the coin to afford such precious wares. I would certainly be noticed there, and the merchant's reaction would tell me whether I appeared as a poor beggar or a respected noble. Yet when I stood right in front of the table, the tall man behind it didn't acknowledge my presence at all even though I looked him straight in the eye. Maybe I did look foreign and strange, I pondered, and it was a matter of politeness to not stare. I boldly reached for a golden necklace with green and blue gemstones, intenting to announce my interest in purchasing the piece. Still no reaction, and to my amazement I realized that my hand went through the necklace as if it was made of air. The merchant was momentarily forgotten, and I reached for the possibly enchanted necklace again. And again my hand just went through it without any resistance. Intrigued and somewhat bewildered I tried to pick up a heavy bracelet instead, then an ornate circlet, a signet ring, another necklace, all to no avail. Was this not a jewelry merchant, but a sorcerer of some sort? Did he sell illusions and this was a demonstration of his talents?

"Good man, are you not interested in my money?" I finally addressed the seller directly. "I traveled quite a long way and it would be a shame if I had to my business somewhere else." It felt strange to make up a story myself instead of relying on the vision to provide it. I best kept it vague in case I would be questioned, though the jewelry merchant – or sorcerer – was clearly not inclined to speak at all. He kept watching the bustle on the plaza with a bored expression, looking right through me as if I wasn't there. Perplexed and frustrated with the man's odd behavior, I spun around and addressed the nearest group of passers-by instead. However, the three women didn't react to my admittedly rude interjection either, they simply kept walking without even looking at me.

A disconcerning suspicion now crept up on me. Could people truly not see or hear me at all? I put this theory to the test right away by approaching a group of men gathered at a stall. One by one, I addressed them, to no avail. Whether I pretended to recognize them or made insulting remarks about their attire, they ignored me. I yelled into the face of a small child, I made a lewd proposition to a wealthy-looking woman, I demanded an older man pay back the money he owed. None of them acknowledged me in any way, and I had to concede that my bewildering suspicion was true. I was a ghost in the lively city of Sarnor, an invisible presence without a voice.

Momentarily confused, I sat down on the stairs of a sandstone building and tried to make sense of my bizarre situation. How was I supposed to learn something in this vision if I could not make myself known? There had to be something here for me, but without any guidance I wouldn't know where to look. I understood the tongue of the Tall Men, and I could read their script, yet I was unable to ask them for information. My hand went through any object I touched, I would not be able to flip through the pages of books either. After spending several hours on this bazaar, I still didn't know which Sarnori city I was in. If I couldn't even figure out my location, how would I learn anything of note?

There _had_ to be somebody here who could see me, I finally concluded. The sun's position suggested I had arrived around midday, half the city' population had to be roaming the alleys of the sprawling bazaar. Of course it was not easy to locate a specific person in such a large crowd. I had to keep looking, had to be more perceptive, had to figure out who exactly I was trying to find. After all, I had stepped through the umbral door with a keen desire to explore, to discover. It only made sense that the vision did not hold my hand. Invigorated by this realization, I got up and rejoined the crowd. I was most likely looking for a scholar of some sort, a librarian or historian, perhaps a priest.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

When I returned to the stairs, the bazaar was shrouded in the warm orange glow of the setting sun. I had approached everyone who gave even a remote impression of being a scholar, yet none of them had reacted to me. The priestess I had found in a prominent temple had continued her preparations for a gathering, the archivists of the nearby library had kept reading their scrolls. The tutor in an estate I had entered unhindered hadn't stopped giving his lecture, nor had the children he taught stopped listening to it. Not one of the merchants who sold books or scrolls from his stall had noticed the invisible customer's attempts at drawing attention. In a tavern I had joined a group of generals or soldiers during their meal, and none of them had been aware of their ghostly guest.

Resigned, I sat down on my old spot and watched the vendors pack up their wares. Something was odd, I realized as I sat there and pondered, and it took me longer than I care to admit to see what it was. The shadows. The setting sun painted sharp, black outlines against the light sandstone, yet they didn't move with casters – they did not move at all. This observation naturally piqued my interest, and I directed my attention away from the merchants, to the white-washed stone walls behind them. My findings were even more bizarre than the initial phenomenon. Not only were the shadows frozen and still, they didn't seem to spring from the obvious sources either. There were additional shadows, but nothing that cast them. To my right, a seller of fabrics and leather goods was storing bales of linen in a barrel. His shadow, however, showed a different pose – the man raising his arms in a defensive way against a mounted attacker. I hadn't seen any horses on the bazaar, nor poultry or cattle, and from overheard conversations I had deducted that such wares were sold on a different market, located somewhere outside the walls of the city. Was this a painting, perhaps? But if the scene of the attack was a painting, it meant that the merchant didn't cast a shadow at all.

I wandered further down the row of stalls and inspected the shadows, matched them to the nearby people, and my bewilderment grew with each step. Every person I saw was accounted for by a shadow, even in places were it seemed incredibly unlikely. Why would patrons only browse wares where their shadowy depictions placed them? How would children know in which direction to run as they chased each other? People couldn't possibly predict where they'd spot an acquaintance and stop for a chat. No, the shadows had to be shadows, and something had congealed them. A spell, a curse, or perhaps...

Was this another reality bleeding into another? Was this why the vision had taken me here? Yes, it began to make sense. In my previous vision I had joined the people of Hardhome, in the Sarnori city I belonged to the other side. I whirled around and was struck with anew confusion when I saw that I myself lacked a shadow. Shouldn't my invisible form create the same bizarre effect as the unseen horses and their riders, cast a shadow despite the unobservable source? Something still didn't add up, but at least I had a clue, a possible explanation for my curious state. Now I had to put the pieces of this puzzle together, rearrange them to understand the picture the vision wanted to show.

Inspired by these thoughts, I crossed the plaza and headed toward an auction hall. Though the bazaar was still fairly busy, the evening had emptied this building as the last auctions had long been concluded. During my earlier exploration I had seen stairs in here, and found my assumption that they led to the hall's roof terrace to be correct. The elevated position let me overlook the bustle below in every direction, and granted me an unobscured view on more distant shadows. They told a story, I concluded after a while, perhaps a tale of caution based on events from the past. It was a shadowplay of violence, fear, and terror: every single scene depicted a gruesome attack. Mounted raiders with long, braided hair and beards, wielding whips and blades shaped like scythes, an all too familiar sight in the grasslands of Essos. Were these shadows perhaps not imprints of the past, but heralds of a terrible future? The once mighty Kingdom or Sarnor had fallen to the Dothraki in the aftermath of Valyria's Doom. If one reality could bleed into another, wasn't it also possible that past, present, and future of a single reality could blend together? Were the Sarnori aware of these warnings? Did they see the shadows on the walls? Did they have a chance to prevent their kingdom's fall?

A faint yet persistent noise jolted me out of my contemplation, distant bells carried by the wind as if the horizon was singing. At the same time I felt the ground tremble beneath me, and the evening sky darkened more rapidly than a setting sun could account for. The Sarnori noticed the changing atmosphere as well. People scrambled to gather their wares, others abandoned their possessions as they stormed toward the nearest buildings, and the cheerful chatter had turned into a cacophony of shouting and yelling. They knew what danger was approaching the city, and I knew trying to escape it was futile. The shadowplay on the walls showed neither the past nor the future. It showed the present day, the imminent fall of the city at the hands of the Dothraki.

The dreadful realization paralyzed my limbs, and so I just stood there and watched the unfolding mayhem from the auction hall's roof. The building I stood on was not tall enough to grant me a glimpse over the city's white walls, therefore all I saw was a dust cloud closing in. Felt the trembling grow stronger under the hooves of the raiders, listened to the ringing of the bells in their braids, the battle cries of the Screamers as the horde came ever closer. I would become a silent, unseen witness to Sarnor's destruction, and despite being terrified to the bone, all I could think of was how the Dothraki would soon call this city. None of the names they had given to conquered cities inspired any hope – the City of Rats, the City of Sickness, The Broken Gods. Yet there was a morbid want for a name deep down inside of me, a name I would find in the tomes of the library in the House of the Undying. One more piece to solve the great puzzle, the bleeding realities that merged right before my eyes.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

When the Dothraki breached the gate and poured into the streets of the city, my mind was suddenly blank, void of thought. Those were not the Dothraki I knew. The attackers were not even human from what I can tell. They were black as ink, amorphous smoke taking the vague forms of men and horses, a figment of the most depraved shadowbinder's imagination. Yet they laid waste to the bazaar, the city, and its people with the same brutal ferocity the real, human Dothraki of my world were known and feared for. Curved blades of black fog cut through bodies of flesh and blood, whips cracked and curled like billowing smoke, fires drove screaming Sarnori out of their shelters.

_Sathar_. I was in in the Waterfall City, the most beautiful city in the Kingdom of Sarnor. And the first city a khal had put to the torch, after which it became known as Yalli Qamayi – 'Wailing Children' in the Dothraki tongue.

At some point, I regained control over my frozen body, and took shelter inside the auction hall. Even though I was a ghost in this world, my instinct had urged me to hide from the terrible shadows and the horrors they caused. Since my hand went right through solid objects I was unable to close the door, and so I cowered in a corner, hoping none of the strange shadow riders would enter the small chamber. The screams from the plaza became my lullaby, though I can't say whether I truly fell asleep or passed out, overwhelmed by terror and fear for my life. However, when I opened my eyes there was bright sunlight flooding the room through a narrow window. The stench of blood and ashes had ceased, instead the air was filled with the enticing scents of a market.

Confused, I got up from the floor and snuck to the door. Had the nightmarish events been only a dream, after all? The gallery outside seemed to confirm this assumption. Though I didn't see people, I heard faint chatter from the large hall below. I cautiously went to the banister and looked down. A group of Sarnori merchants stood near the dais, apparently discussing the sequence of their auctions. One man in particular caught my attention, as I was certain I had seen him decapitated in the night. With growing bewilderment, I returned to my hideout and peered through its window. The bazaar was bustling outside as if nothing had happened. Its many colorful booths and awnings showed no signs of a fire, and I saw neither blood nor dead bodies on the ground. People went about their daily business; haggled over prices, tried samples, browsed the wares. The sandstone walls were still stained by the terrible shadows, but they hadn't changed either. Motionless and faint, just the way I had found them, showing the same gruesome scenes as the day before.

I exhaled with relief. The slaughter I had witnessed had been a nightmare. And as frightful as it had been, the realization that I had dreamt within a vision overshadowed the brutal spectacle I so clearly remembered. I couldn't recall any dreams I had had in previous visions, though I had slept in each one. Perhaps this newfound ability was owed to the larger dose of Shade of the Evening, I pondered as I left the chamber and descended the stairs to the auction hall. Once I reached the ground floor and passed by the dais, I paused and listened to the merchants for a moment. Apparently they had agreed on the order in which they would auction their wares, and something about it struck me as strange. Hadn't the same man sold fifty barrels of prickly pears the day before? Why hadn't he simply auctioned off a hundred? And hadn't his rotund acquaintence told the same joke after they concluded their negotiations? Hadn't I overheard the exact same conversation when I had roamed the city in search of someone who could see me?

I had indeed, I realized as I went outside and wandered the market. The merchants in the auction hall were not the only ones who repeated their previous actions and conversations. In the tavern I found the generals and soldiers placing the same orders for their meal. The priestess in the temple made the same preparations for the same ceremony. Even the tutor taught the same lesson to the same children in the same house, and the older boy interrupted him with the same question. Wherever I went, people played out the same scenes I had witnessed during my initial exploration. And when evening came, I heard the same song of bells in the distant wind.

What was the meaning of this? Was the city, perhaps the entire old Kingdom of Sarnor, trapped in a vicious cycle that would forever continue? Did they relive the day of their fall over and over for some arcane reason? Was the vision meant to teach me something and I had missed the lesson the first time around? I hurried back to the auction hall when the thunder of hooves and the ringing of bells drew closer. Perhaps I had been meant to observe the destruction, and it repeated because I hadn't seen it from the small chamber. This time, I decided, I would stay on the terrace, would watch the invasion of the shadow riders. I would become the silent, invisible witness the vision wanted me to be, and I would not let instinct or fear get the better of me.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

The shadows fell upon the city like they had done one day before, unleashed fire and fury upon the frightened Sarnori. Black whips cracked, black blades cut through the purples and oranges of the evening, black riders chased men, women, and children who tried to escape their burning hideouts. Thick, black smoke rose, carried the scent of blood and brimstone to the roofs of the city and darkened the sky. Though every bone of my body urged me to flee, I remained on the terrace and endured the gruesome spectacle. Tried to make out the event the vision wanted me to see, though looking for something unusual felt futile under these circumstances.

Amidst the deadly mayhem I finally spotted something that stood out nonetheless. From a cloud of billowing smoke, a particularly imposing shadow emerged in the center of the devastated plaza. The beast's mane and tail were only rags of black fog, in contrast to the rider's sharper outline. A long braid was floating behind him, slithering like a weightless snake in the wind. He held a curved blade in one hand, undoubtedly a Dothraki arakh, and though it too was made of shadow, it seemed to gleam in the flickering glow of the fires. As terrifying as otherworldly horsemen were, not even the entire horde combined could rival their khal. If hatred and death had an avatar in this world, I was looking at it. And to my horror the creature looked back at me in that moment.

I was paralyzed by the realization that I had locked eyes with the khal, that he could see me, that I was not a ghost to the shadows. There was nothing of note on the roof terrace, there was nobody with me. My perception didn't deceive me, he knew _I_ was here. As he shook the shadowy vines that were his reins, directing his mount toward the auction hall's entrance, I woke from my frozen state, turned around and ran.

Maybe there was another door downstairs. I desperately hoped so as stumbled inside and almost fell down the short flight of stairs to the gallery. A storage room door, a basement hatch, some sort of tunnel leading to the alley behind the building, there just had to be another way out. Yet when I reached the gallery, I saw that the monstrous khal had already entered the hall and slowly rode toward the dais. He'd spot me right away if I went down the stairs, and it was owed to sheer luck that he hadn't seen me already. _The small chamber at the end of the gallery._ There hadn't been any shadows near it in the night. Perhaps I would be able to hide there again, perhaps the dawn would save me. I ran as fast as I could while the khan inspected dead bodies on the ground floor. Evidently, he hadn't abandoned his search for me, but his momentary distraction allowed me to cross the gallery unnoticed.

My heart was pounding when I reached the open door, and I paused to catch my breath behind a tall column. Then I looked up, looked into the chamber, and what I saw there froze my blood. A shadow, cast by an invisible source, cowering in the corner where I had spent the last night. _My shadow._ I had become part of the vision, I now _existed_ in the vicious cycle of Sarnor's recurring demise. My mind was spinning with too many thoughts, couldn't comprehend the implication of being trapped in this inescapable horror. I reached for the door, its frame, the sandstone wall, my hands no longer passing through either, and then there was only blackness as oblivion embraced me.


	7. The Cascading Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a gift for PointGiven. The actual request was 'Isle of Toads', but since I have other plans for that, I went with the next best oily black stone. 
> 
> Vague content warning: not _super_ graphic body horror, but this is Sothoryos, home to 90 % of Planetos' weird diseases.

"You are awake."

I couldn't tell whether the voice belonged to Dareyush or somebody else. My vision was blurred, all I could make out were vague outlines and blotches of muted colors, stirring somewhere further back in the room. I slowly sat up and the laborious process gave my eyes the time to adjust. A tall, lanky figure moving with the strange grace of a ghost. Tattered robes in grey and faded, dark purple. Strange sigils shifting under the skin of his skull. A warlock, and though I still wasn't sure if I had met him before, it was a familiar enough sight for the moment.

"Where am I?" I asked. This was neither my chamber nor was it Dareyush's, if anything the room resembled the salon of a luxurious manse in the city of Qarth. Too large, too sunny to be a personal study, too sparsely furnished to be lived in, too well-decorated to be hidden away from admiring eyes. The windows, of course, could be an illusion as so many things in the Palace of Dust, yet somehow my surroundings seemed too ordinary to not be real. The room was mundane in its luxury, didn't fit in with the spectacular, surreal vistas I had seen in the hallways. It was not a brillant starscape confined inside an iridescent crystal, it wasn't the wide, open ocean within a small silver bowl. It wasn't the mysterious forest of Mossovy growing through the walls of a staircase, it wasn't a shimmering bridge made of light beams that let me cross the Dothraki Sea with a few steps. No, it was just a salon or sun room, the kind one would find in the manse of a wealthy noble.

"In the House of the Undying, of course."

Perhaps it was Dareyush. I couldn't recall the timbre of his voice, but just like the ink under his skin it infrequently shifted. It was possible the air of disinterest and the monotonous vibe to the words were something many or most warlocks adopted over time.

"The sun stands high," the man continued. "We shouldn't let Envoy Makawi wait any longer. It took him months to be granted an audience with the Undying, and almost as long to be given their approval. Changing the past is no small undertaking, and you will need time to make the proper preparations once you stepped through the eons."

Changing the past? Stepping through eons? Confused, I got up from what turned out to be a low, lavish sofa and observed my strange host in the far corner of the room. He stood in front of a tall shelf and was filling a black leather bag with all sorts of items; feathers, scales, gemstones, tiny vials and potions. What was he preparing for? Who was Envoy Makawi? Before I gave voice to my questions, the warlock turned around and shoved the black bag into my hands.

"A seemingly overwhelming task, I know," he said, then gave me a slap on the shoulder. "You must be wondering why the Undying are entrusting an acolyte with it." I nodded, hoping to get some sort of explanation, and the warlock promptly delivered one in an almost cheerful tone. "I, too, was surprised by this choice. However, they were rather particular about the required qualifications and nobody else fulfilled each and every demand. They asked for things no mentor could have provided, experiences only the House of the Undying can bestow. 'Time spent in Iluma Ayon, studying histories and pasts'. 'Visions of great destruction'. 'Bleeding realities, seen from both sides of the veil'." He gestured to the door and continued on our way to the hallway. "Some elders felt slighted, of course, but the Undying don't concern themselves with the envy of mortals. Envoy Makawi, a far-traveled seeker like you, didn't have any objections when he heard about the things you have seen. It is his opinion that truly matters in the end."

"What exactly is this 'task'?" I inquired. It had to be something of great importance if this envoy had spoken to the Undying directly, and it had to be something that would bring great prestige if even the elder warlocks envied my position. "What past event is Envoy Makawi planning to change? What is my role in all this, why is my specific knowledge needed?"

"The fall of Yeen," the warlock replied. "The events that led to the demise of his people. You will be the eyes and ears of the Undying, an observer to record our attempt to restore what was lost in the past."

"Has anything like this ever been attempted before?" My question echoed under the vaulted ceiling as we passed through a gallery filled with the shimmering fragments of stars.

"No." The warlock headed for a large, open archway. A green-tinted mist emerged from it, along with chirping and birdsongs that suggested a jungle. "The circumstances are expectional, as is the potential gain of this undertaking. The restoration of a vanished culture could change the world and our understanding of it." He stopped a few steps away from the archway. "You have seen worlds fall in more than one vision. You must have pondered the possibilities, have you not? What if the cataclysmic events could be prevented? What if Valyrian magic had prevailed? What if the wisdom of Sarnor had never been erased by the Dothraki, savages who conquer and burn what they fear?"

"Of course I have thought about it," I gave back. "My visions always ended abruptly, tore me away when there were still so many things left unlearned." Was I speaking to Dareyush? Would he take offense if I voiced discontent with my mentor's neglect? There was something familiar in the warlock's features, but still not enough to be certain. "It was a source of constant frustration," I said instead. "The inability to corroborate my findings, the feeling I hadn't fully explored what the visions tried to show me. Therefore the concept of bleeding realities has me intrigued. Even though I've only seen glimpses so far, it was a chance to see both sides of the story."

The warlock knowingly nodded, apparently this was the answer he had expected from me. "This time you will see more, much more," he assured me. "The Undying chose Yeen for a reason. An ancient and mysterious culture that holds many secrets, almost as old as K'Dath, Carcosa, and the lost kingdom of N'ghai. The walls of reality and time, however, are thinner, more permeable between us and Yeen. A recent discovery not even the Undying suspected."

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

Envoy Makawi was unlike any Sothoryi I had ever seen. There was no resemblance to the savage ghouls said to roam the unexplored jungles. His swarthy skin was bare of brindled patterns, and his hair, adorned with golden beads and colorful feathers, was straight and smooth like strands of black silk. The big bones, disproportionate muscles and hog-like facial features of the Brindled Men were entirely absent as well. Makawi was of average height, and he possessed a slender frame and the face of a scholar. If I hadn't been told that he hailed from the lost city of Yeen, I would have taken him for a Ghiscari, perhaps with a distant ancestor from the Summer Islands or Naath.

His appearance, however, was the least mind-boggling aspect. According to the warlock, Makawi had transcended a vision, had stepped through the realities and eons into the Qarth of today. "We call it 'the Otherwhere'," he explained in an unfamiliar accent. "A temple of sorts, though all gods have long left. My people used to receive visions there; knowledge of things past, present and future. Now it is a place of study and insight, not unlike the House of the Undying."

"This is how our realities converge," the warlock took over. "To the Yeenese, this place..." He spread out his arms in the hall, overgrown with tall trees, vines, ferns, and big-leaved shrubs. "...is in the Otherwhere, the way you experienced Valyria and Sarnor as visions."

"I inadvertently created a portal," Makawi continued with an air of importance. "I entered the Otherwhere in Yeen's darkest hour, hoping to find a way to fend off our unknown attackers. Yet the Otherwhere brought me here, to a different place and time, to the Undying who hold power beyond all I ever imagined. With their aid, I can protect my people from the vicious invaders and ensure that Yeen will prevail through the ages to come."

The warlock led us to the far side of the artificial jungle where an impossibly tall mountain range stood instead of a wall. Somewhere far above I could see a stone ceiling, a bizarre sight even in the everchanging House of the Undying. The foothills were surrounded by a clear lake, a rocky basin for the curtains of water cascading down from a plateau. After the warlock had bid us farewell I followed Makawi to a mossy path, meandering up the overgrown mountains. I only spotted our destination when we had already walked a good distance. A cavern lay hidden behind the majestic waterfall, invisible to the eye from the warlock's position.

"I have heard about your reckless ways," Makawi said when we were close enough to feel the spray of the torrents. The noise of the rushing water almost drowned his words out, but there was unmistakable satisfaction in his voice. "Some of the warlocks warned me. They claimed you were not ready for this task and still had too much to learn. Yet recklessness allowed you to do what none of them has been able to do despite decades of study." He regarded me for a moment with keen, dark eyes, and a smile played on his lips when he continued. "You touched the other side," he said. "The shadows of Sarnor became aware of your presence."

Had I told the warlocks about the last vision in my stupor? I couldn't recall, but how else would Mawaki know what had happened in the vision of Sarnor? "I only recently learned about bleeding realities," I gave back. "The archives offer very little about this peculiar phenomenon, therefore I turned to visions to further my studies. However, I wasn't aware of the unique feat I accomplished. Are you saying nobody before me has experienced this?"

Makawi nodded, still smiling his knowing smile. "The Undying thought it impossible. To them, visions were merely visions. Experiences to be observed, not to be interfered with. But you have proven them wrong. You have shown that the realities can be touched, can be changed. Which is why I insisted on your assistance with my task."

We followed the mossy path, walked behind the rushing cascade and into the cavern. To my irritation, that was all I saw. A damp, dark cave, leading not much deeper into the mountain. There were no tunnels, no manmade structures, only unremarkable stalagmites and stalactites and a rocky wall, covered with mosses and lichen. Yet when I turned around to look back to the jungle we had come from, I realized that the waterfall itself was a barrier between our two worlds. The strange room in the House of the Undying was no longer there, instead an endless valley stretched out under an open sky.

Yeen. The legendary city of Sothoryos had posed a riddle for generations of scholars, and here it lay before me in its prime. The sparse reports of explorers who had ventured to this mysterious place through the centuries described foreboding ruins even the jungle avoided. Their accounts spoke of brindled ghouls that ate the flesh of the dead, of ailments too terrible to imagine, and malformed, eyeless creatures dwelling in caverns and tunnels. But this was not the Yeen I saw in the lush valley. No, I saw a sprawling capital, larger and more imposing than the cities of Essos, built from enormous blocks of oily black stone. Two arms of the Zamoyos washed around its borders, and the river itself looked nothing like I had heard it described either. Instead of murky, green waters and drifting dead trees, crystal clear waves reflected the cerulean sky.

"It looks so peaceful from above." Makawi's words echoed in the cavern and through the rushing of water. "Perhaps now you understand why we need to preserve the knowledge of my people."

"What threatens this peace?" I inquired. "The city appears to be well-defended. I have never seen such strong walls, and the river offers further means of protection." We slowly walked through the cavern to where the path continued, leading down to the valley. "The history of Sothoryos has been lost to time in my world, so please forgive my unawareness. But there have been no reports of other ruined cities. Gorosh and Zamettar, both founded by the Ghiscari, have long been abandoned, and evidently neither could have been the home of your foes."

Makawi sounded like his thoughts were far away when he answered. "They came from the east," he said as we stepped out into the open and began our descent to the city. "We don't know who they are or where their homelands might be. Our sages can't interpret their strange, twisted tongue, and the invaders have no interest in negotiation. Envoys and scouts alike were attacked on sight. Sometimes their bodies were returned with horrific mutilations, other times they simply vanished and we found their bones, scraped clean of flesh and muscle, scattered around the fires of abandoned enemy camps."

I shuddered at the terrible implications, and not even the magnificent view across Yeen could fully chase these haunting images from my mind. "How great are their numbers?" I asked, trying to better understand the situation. "What weapons do they wield? Are they able to breach the walls of the city?"

"They are not," Makawi gave back, but he didn't sound hopeful. "Their weapons are primitive; clubs, spears, bows and arrows. However, they must possess some kind of dreadful magic. No matter how many of them our warriors strike down, their numbers are never truly diminished. Some sages claim our foe can raise the dead, others say they never die in the first place." He sighed and absently gazed to the eastern horizon. "The magic imbued in the black stones of our walls is the only protection we have left, and it gets weaker the longer the enemy remains in our lands. Their dark magic corrupts the forest around us, poisons the river, the soil, even the air. Yeen has been under siege for close to five decades. Our people are starving, and every year fewer children are born. What you see in the valley is the dying husk of city. Empty halls, fields barren or overtaken by wild plants that suffocate the crops we once grew."

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

I found Makawi's harrowing description to be true when we reached the foothills. Though the glossy black structures showed no signs of damage I soon saw that the resolve of the great city lay broken. What had once been the plaza of a palace or temple was now the encampment of skinny women and children. Most, if not all of them, appeared to be stricken by diseases as I saw blistered skin, swollen joints, and bleeding sores. The group was gathered around a large fountain and watched us walk by with hollow eyes, barely showing a reaction to our presence. Some were chewing on roots or the bones of salamanders, others just sat there in silence, not moving at all. The meager meals, their emaciated bodies, the gaunt faces and the emptiness of their expressions only underlined the stark contrast to their attire. Like Makawi, they wore colorful woven robes and had adorned hair, neck, ears and faces with jewelry made of gleaming gold. All their wealth couldn't buy them freedom from the ruthless attackers, but it dawned upon me why the warlocks were so eager to help.

"Our situation looks hopeless, I know," Makawi said as we crossed the plaza and left the lethargic group behind. "But you must believe me when I say the risk we're about to take will be worth it. If we succeed, and I'm certain we will, Yeen will rise again after these years of hardship."

I hurried to keep up with him while I looked around. Lone people, many old, crippled or both, wandered around between the black buildings, seemingly lost and unaware of their surroundings. Not a single one acknowledged our presence even with a brief glance, and I couldn't help but think of them as ghosts who didn't realize they still inhabited bodies. "I do not mean to offend you," I began with some hesitation, but I didn't get to voice my admittedly rather gloomy observations.

"These are not the last of my people," Makawi firmly cut me off. "And I'm well-aware that there is no hope for this city." He ascended the wide steps of an impressive edifice, a wide tower with an upturned, shingled roof. "The old, the sick, and the dying you see..." He paused and took a deep breath while waiting for me on top of the stairs. "Sacrifices have to be made." Regret echoed in his voice, but his eyes remained stern and determined. "The ghoulish invaders want Yeen, that much we know. The ritual will release the old magic imbued in our walls. Once it is complete we will surrender and open the gates. The spells that protected us for so long will turn against the invaders and vanquish the threat they pose once and for all."

I gasped, finally realizing what the grand plan of the Undying was all about. "You are going to curse the city?" I got out. "What about your people? You can't possibly sacrifice them all to punish your foe!"

"Those strong and healthy enough to travel will begin their long journey to the untouched, fertile lands in the south," Makawi calmly replied. "The people down there..." He vaguely gestured across the plaza. "They would not survive either way. The southern jungle is thick and there lay many dangers. A wealth of diseases, worse than what you see here, each of them the most terrible way to die. White vampire bats and wyverns of all sizes. Venomous snakes, centipedes, and spiders. Giant apes, lizardfolk, corrupted halfbreeds that are neither all or man nor all beast. Insects that cause horrible infestations and lay their eggs and larvae under still living skin." He sighed and for a brief moment there was a deep sadness in his eyes. "Not many will survive the Green Hell, but we are desperate, and we turn to desperate measures. Perhaps one day our descendants will forgive us for what we had to do today."

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

The air inside the temple-like structure was cool and humid, and the black walls swallowed the afternoon's sullen light. Even though previous visions had shown me the past, I had never been overcome by the kind of sensation I felt here. There was an overwhelming sense of antiquity emanating from the oily black halls; a lingering terror, ghosts of eon long gone grazing my mortal skin, history being both dead and alive in the very same moment.

Makawi hadn't said a word since we had entered the temple, and I didn't dare to break the tomblike silence. Only our footsteps echoed in the abandoned corridors and stairwells, interspersed by faint splashing when we walked through shallow puddles in vast, empty halls. We did not speak much once we had reached our destination either. The square room with large, open windows offered a marvelous view across the entire city, but the sight couldn't soothe the dark thoughts in my mind.

The oily stone altar in the room's center, the sing-song incantation Makawi muttered in the foreign Yeenese tongue as he carefully arranged the items from the black leather bag on the floor. I knew what was about to happen and the thought was revolting. But the Undying had chosen me as their observer, I reminded myself. This was my purpose, I was the only possible link between present and past.

I did not flinch when Makawi climbed onto the altar, didn't turn away when he directed the golden blade to his throat. I stoically fulfilled my role as observer, took in every detail, recorded the ritual with my mind. Only when Makawi made the cut and the blood flowed onto the black altar, I woke from my detached stupor. A heart-wrenching, soul-piercing shriek went through the valley, and in my first shock I didn't realize that it did not come from Makawi. The city trembled like a beast waking from a deep slumber, the shrill cry became a chorus, a hundred thousand tormented voices, an entire culture screaming through the black walls of Yeen.

I didn't look back, never once turned around, as I ran through the maze of chambers of hallways. I had to reach the waterfall, the portal to my world, and to get there I first had to get out of the collapsing temple. Whatever terrible curse Makawi had unleashed upon Yeen, it would consume the city, spread out, perhaps even shatter the surrounding mountains.

The large stone slabs of the plaza were crackling and crumbling, the beast underneath the city still rumbled and roared. I had to evade falling debris from the buildings around me, sidestep chasms that opened without any warning. The horrific screams still echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once, louder and more harrowing than a horde of dying shrykes. And now I finally saw where the shrill howling originated. The diseased and crippled no longer stood still on the plaza, every last one of them was contorting in horror and pain. Their mangled bodies were twitching, the Yeenese turned into something inhuman right before my eyes. Blisters burst open and released oily black pus, making it look as if the dark complexion bled out through their skin. Others were further along in their ghastly transformation; ashen flakes crumbled away from their bodies, exposed parched flesh underneath. Bloodlined eyes turned into gaping black holes, limbs deformed, stretched or bloated to abnormal proportions.

_The waterfall._ I had to reach it, had to escape this city of disease and death. My mind clung to this one simple thought, the only sane thing in this world of nascent madness. I tried to not pay heed to my surroundings as best as I could and kept my eyes firmly fixed on the mountains above. The fountain's water had been sparkling and clean when Makawi and I had crossed the plaza, now it was sludgy and putrid. Its foul stench turned my stomach as I came closer, but I knew I had almost reached the edge of the city and so I kept going.

Rain, black and heavy as ink, began falling when I stumbled into the relative safety of the jungle canopy by the foothill, but I did not dare to pause and catch my breath. A surging murmur from the city and the adjacent river grew louder and louder even as I ascended the path, and when I looked down I immediately came to regret it. Swarms of flies and gnats emerged from the blighted waters, black clouds sprawling out across the city and beyond its mighty walls. Every bone, every muscle I had pulsated with pain, but I kept climbing, higher and higher, away from the accursed valley.

Relief washed over me when I crawled into the cavern on hands and knees. The cascading water had not yet become putrid, though it was certainly only a matter of time until the curse the would reach the mountains as well. My eyes and lungs were burning, but I didn't allow myself to give in to exhaustion. I dragged myself further into the cavern, tried to fight down the lingering fear that the way out would not be there.

What if the ritual had corrupted all of Yeen's magic? What if the portal between the worlds had been closed? _No, it cannot be_, I heard my inner voice say with firm determination. The Undying chose me for a reason. I possessed talents no other warlock had ever had. I was a wanderer who could step through the walls of time and reality, I could do what the Undying had not thought possible. I was not a mere seeker like so many others. I was special. The portal would be there and it would open for me.

With the last bit of strength my aching body could muster I crawled across slippery rocks, to the path emerging on the waterfall's other side. Only when I spotted the false jungle and the ceiling where a sky should have been, I allowed myself to slump to the ground in the House of the Undying.


	8. The Jaded Door

I didn't spot the warlock in the luscious valley that I now recognized as a recreation of the wild Sothoryi jungle. Although there was still no sky, the landscape was shrouded in pallid moonlight. A symbolic change, I surmised, letting the Undying know that the sun over Yeen had forever set.

The Undying. They were probably expecting my report of the events, and I had no intentions of making them wait. I ignored my exhaustion and got back on my feet, and descended the sloped path as fast as my body allowed. On the way I recalled the ritual I had witnessed, conjured up every horrifying sight before my inner eye, everything I had seen when the curse spread out through the city. Yes, the images were haunting, but they also filled me with pride. I had memorized even the finer details and was able to describe them in eloquent words. The shape of Makawi's golden dagger, which vial he had consumed before cutting his throat. The deformations of the Yeenese by the fountain, the timbre of their screams and growls. The sensation when the black rain touched my skin, the changes I had seen in the river and the jungle. The Undying would be pleased. I had lived up to their expectations, had been their ears and eyes beyond the walls of reality and time.

Only when I had left the artifical jungle through the archway I became aware of the silence. The recollection of Yeen had diverted my attention and I hadn't noticed how eerily quiet it was until now. Shouldn't I have heard the rustling of leaves in the wind, the rushing of cascading water, the echo of my steps on the reflective marble? I stopped in the center of the gallery and strained my ears, yet there was nothing but a distinct absence of sound. Confused, I whirled around to the archway and made another astonishing discovery there. The jungle I had left only moments ago longer existed. An inconceivably large, empty hall had taken its place, so large that I couldn't see where – or if - it ended. The plain sand-colored walls seemed to go on forever, and the only thing the hall had in common with the jungle was the equally plain, endless ceiling.

I returned to the archway with caution and a flurry of hazy thoughts rushing through my mind. Did the disappearance of the jungle mean Yeen was entirely gone? Had the curse erased it from reality and the House of the Undying now lacked a point of reference to maintain its recreation? Or had I merely seen what usually transpired behind closed doors, a room's transformation after a vision had ended? Were there actual rooms behind the doors I had gone through? The question had never occured to me before, and the warlock had never addressed it either. Was it even a real room? Perhaps it was an empty shell, a blank slate that would transform once a seeker entered.

Curiosity won over caution, I took a step forward, and was almost disappointed to see no changes at all. However, the silence in here felt thicker, more all-encompassing, and this strange sensation compelled me to shout out loud. The enormous size of the hall should have amplified my voice, but there was no echo and the silence seemed to swallow the volume. Had I even heard my own shout? I tried again, and it left me with the same inconclusive result. The air was stale and perfectly still, yet its effect reminded me of screaming against a strong wind that carried a voice in an unintended direction.

I would have to bring up the subject with the warlock, I decided. Yes, I could have walked around in the empty hall, but there was simply nothing that sparked my interest - walls, floor, and ceiling looked exactly the same in every direction. Perhaps this was an ordinary occurence, so mundane that it didn't need to be discussed and had therefore never been mentioned by the warlock. Or perhaps it was a consequence of the disappearance of Yeen, after all. If so, it related to the events I had been chosen to study. Would my report be complete if I omitted this aftereffect of the ritual? I had to make sure. The Undying wouldn't be satisfied if I overlooked a potentially very important angle.

With sudden haste, I rushed back through the archway, crossed the gallery, and headed up a flight of winding stairs. The library wasn't far from my position, and I'd certainly find my answer there. If Makawi had changed history with the aid of the Undying, this new reality must have bled into mine. Texts concerning Yeen would have been rewritten, and I alone remembered what they used to say. Time meant little to the Undying, and they'd appreciate my diligence even if it caused a slight delay.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

I found the library shrouded in moonlight, inciding through the glass spire far above. However, I had spent quite some time here before my vision of Sarnor, therefore I navigated the dark aisles and stairs with ease. Once I had reached the relevant section on the third floor I looked around for a candle. It didn't take long until I spotted one on a desk, merely a stump, but it was all I needed to locate _Speculations concerning the lost city of Yeen_, a thick tome bound in green leather, on the shelf. Shouldn't the title have changed? Why would the warlocks still need speculation? Wouldn't they know for certain what had transpired in Yeen long ago? Perhaps it took time for realities to adjust, I pondered as I flipped through the yellowed pages and found no changes at all. Or maybe I had to give my report to the Undying before the altered past could take hold in this reality...

The candle stump left me no choice but to postpone my investigation. Its tiny flame drowned in the puddle of wax, and the moonlight alone was too dim to make out any words. Resigned, I got up and wandered back to the stairs. Upon reaching the banister I paused as something below on the library's ground floor had caught my attention. A swaying light slowly moved toward the room's center, a small lantern carried by a warlock, I soon recognized. The Undying had probably sent him to find me and escort me to their chambers. I called out, once more without producing an echo, and hurried down the first flight of stairs. Apparently the man had neither seen nor heard me as he turned around and walked back to the door. I rushed down the stairs to the first floor, skipping several steps, more jumping than running, and only caught a glimpse of the warlock, returning to the hallway, when I reached the landing. Again I called out, again there was no echo, and the lantern's round light shroud grew dimmer as the man moved further away. However, he walked slowly. It would be easy to catch up with him outside. I hurried down the last winding stairs to the ground floor and ran to the door, then stopped in confusion as the light was now gone.

Instead of the gallery I knew to be outside the archive I had entered a tunnel, utterly unremarkable in every respect. Brick walls of a nondescript grey, forming a passage that was average in both height and width. The stones were neither new nor old, as far from 'freshly built' as they were from 'long abandoned'. A musty scent, akin to an seldomly used cellar, filled the air; an odor not particularly unusual in the House of the Undying. The warlock and his swinging lantern were nowhere to be seen, though the moonlight from the library illuminated the tunnel in both directions. Taken aback, I stopped near the door, cleared my throat and shouted, once more without echo.

To my surprise, there was a reaction this time, though it didn't come in the form of a verbal answer. Instead I noticed a flicker, apparently originating around a corner further back in the tunnel. It had to be the warlock with his lantern, so I hurried down the hallway in this direction. Perhaps all this was necessary to reach the chambers of the Undying. They were said to dwell deep within the maze of dreams, truths, and illusions; a place so secret not even I could find the way there without a guide. A dull thud from the corner confirmed my assumption. The warlock had made his position known twice now, of course I was meant to follow the trail.

Around the corner I found another hallway, the same plain grey bricks, but I could see the far end. _A door._ There was a door at the end, and it was slowly closing. The warlock must have gone through it just before I had entered the tunnel as I could still see the light of his lantern, now filtered through the stained glass of the door's oval window. It had to be the lair of the Undying, a place only a few chosen seekers had ever seen. A sense of awe overcame me, growing stronger the closer I walked to the door. The pale green paint on the oak wood was faded and crackling, dry ivy clung to the masonry around the weather-worn frame, the knob was covered in a thick crust of dark rust. What caught my eye, however, was the window. Even under the dust and cracks I could make out that it showed a creature of inhuman beauty, a depiction of the form the Undying presented to mortal guests, I assumed.

The door opened without a sound, and when I went through it I found myself surrounded by darkness at first. Then light flickered somewhere to my right, I turned around and saw the man I had followed. He paid no attention to me as he was busy reingniting his lantern with a candle, evidently taken from the only object present in this small chamber, a soot-blackened holder protruding from the wall. The meager shine of the candle's flame was enough to see at first glance that the man did not look like a warlock. His head was shaven and a deathly pallor clung to his skin, but every other aspect set him apart. He was almost as wide as tall, a stark contrast to the haggard warlocks, and his lips, thin lines barely visible between fleshy jowls, lacked a blue tint. Instead of tattered grey and pale purple attire, he wore an opulent, black robe made of shimmering velvet, embroidered with unfamiliar symbols in silver and gold. And most notably, strange jewelry adorned his hands, neck, and ears. Black crystals or metal that seemed to reflect absent rainbows, a play of colors contained in intricate angular patterns.

"So you finally heeded my advice and made a decision." The man, having lit his lantern, looked at me all of a sudden. "Now one question remains: Will I like your conclusion?" He regarded me appraisingly with small, deep-set eyes. "Who will it be? Vaur, the secret servant? Au't, the great liar? Emmigesh, the mother of flies?"

Confused, I just stared at him for a long moment. The Undying had names, individual titles? I had not been aware of this. How was I supposed to make a choice if I had no further information? "I have come to see the Undying," I began, just to give some kind of answer. It was probably not the one the obese man expected, but maybe he'd elaborate on the options if I kept my words vague. "I do not recall a name, I only know I'm supposed to be here and..."

"I spit on Ammetu!" the man interrupted, though his anger did not appear to be directed at me. "Cursed be her name and Au't, her false god!" Strangely, his features softened after this brief outburst, and he gestured invitingly to something obscured by his corpulent frame. A tunnel, no, a flight of stairs leading down, I realized when he moved and illuminated this part of the room with his lantern. "The memory will come back to you," he assured me. "Ammetu's supposed spells never last long. That you found your way here only proves it. Undying E'u, the Perpetual Flux, guided you through the maze of falseness and lies." He now sounded cheerful, and my apparent confusion seemed to be the source of his delight.

"I'm sure it will pass," I gave back, now also puzzled by the man's change in demeanor. "It appears I have come to the right place indeed, but I must admit it is rather uncomfortable to have this void in my mind. Perhaps you could jog my memory, so the spell wears off more quickly?"

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

After introducing himself as High Priest Unnash, the fat man gladly obliged with my vague request. When I followed him down the stairs and through a labyrinth of grey tunnels, he kept talking without intermission, but his explanations didn't make things any clearer to me. More often than not he derailed himself, cursed a variety of foreign names, then reverted back to mischievous satisfaction with my unwitting choice. E'u the Undying had never been a warlock and didn't reside in the House of the Undying, that much I understood. However, this was where my comprehension ended as the description did not make any sense. As the byname 'perpetual flux' suggested, E'u apparently had no constant shape, a regrettable condition that Unnash sought to change. "E'u is of the stars," he told me with an air of importance. "Too vast and amorphous to be perceived by mere mortals - for now. Therefore we must forge a great husk, a solid form with enough angles to contain all his aspects. The ways he can change us, the consequence of each possible action, every desire known and unknown to man." He stopped to open a door, then turned around and glared at me with feverish eyes. "Absolute knowledge! By touching god we'll understand the true fate of all worlds!"

Daylight greeted us when we reached a parapet walk, overlooking a vast, rectangular courtyard, and Unnash kept rambling about lies of false god and the great change E'u would bring. The building we had left resembled a YiTish temple, except for the yard. Men and women, wearing the same attire as Unnash, bustled about in an assembly of forges instead of a garden. Furnaces, anvils, stone water basins, racks filled with hammers and tongs – and strangely shaped formations of iridescent metal. They looked man-made, forged, chiseled, carefully shaped, though none bore even a passing resemblance to another. Some were pyramidal and tall as men, others looked like strange flowers grown from bricks and cubes. While some subtly shimmered in every shade of the rainbow, others displayed only one or two tones, more vivid and striking as if to make up for the lack in variation. Several of these otherworldly contraptions were played about by erratic burst of light, imperceptibile colors, pure energy; spectacular sights I observed with my mind, not my eyes.

"Eidoley," Unnash answered my unspoken question after hanging his lantern on a hook by the door. "They, too, are born from the stars. Lesser, far lesser, beings than E'u, not imperious enough to fully take shape through a husk." He beckoned me to follow him to the wooden stairs and continued his explanation when we descended. "As their demands are lesser as well it is much easier to attract them. One out of three husks will be possessed for some time, until the eidoley becomes exhausted and abandons the vessel."

He showed me around on the yard, pointed out the most promising husks in progress, let me inspect the mesmerizing contraptions up close. In my fascination I almost didn't realize that the eidoley reminded me of a previous vision, but it struck me with full force once the thought surfaced in my mind. This had to be the reality that had bled into Hardhome! The translucent lights, their shimmering colors; no doubt, the eidoley had brought on the town's destruction! With great excitement, I shared my insight with Unnash, told him I had seen these beings before. The high priest, however, reacted with confusion. He knew of no snowy lands in the west, he said, certainly none inhabited by men as we know them. Whatever I thought to remember had to be a falsehood, planted in my head by Ammetu. The priestesses of the great liar A'ut were known for such trickery, they erased memories and replaced them with lies to lure new acolytes to their side. A'ut was a false god, of course, one nobody would worship without such deceptions.

Perhaps it was true. What I had seen in Hardhome had been a vision, it stood to reason that only I remembered it. Quite possibly, it hadn't even happened in any reality in the first place. The House of the Undying held truths, yes, but it also offered possibilities, impossibilities, and anything in between. Lost in thought, I followed Unnash to a laboratory or kitchen near an enomous tower on the opposite side of the courtyard and absently listened to what he explained on the way. Only when I gazed through the kitchen's large window, the realization where I was jolted me out of my contemplation.

Before me in the flat valley lay unknown K'Dath. The first of all cities, the cradle from which all civilization had sprawled, older and more mysterious than even Xabarys and Yrema; places that only existed in whispered legends. And K'Dath was not the haunted ruin I knew, no, it was a living, breathing city at its height. Instead of a barren wasteland feared even by shrykes, a fertile river delta stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Now I understood why Unnash hadn't heard of Hardhome or the snowy regions in the far north. The vision had transcended time in ways I hadn't suspected. K'Dath had been at its height almost twelve-thousand years before the Long Night. From Unnash's point of view, the events I had seen would happen eons from now, in a far future - if they would ever come true at all.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

My apprenticeship only lasted a few weeks. Bismuth, or 'sky ore', as the cultists called it, did most of the work by itself. Its low melting point made it easy to liquefy, and not much else was needed to achieve the desired results. As I had suspected, the artisans did not create the elaborate, repeating patterns of the husks, it was a natural effect that occured when the molten mass cooled down and became solid. The coloration could be influenced somewhat by dousing the still hot metal with water and various admixtures, and learning the recipes took up most of my time.

I also learned about K'Dath's many cults while I worked in the forges. Though I had my doubts about the aspiration to give form to E'u, none of the other options struck me as better. I had seen the devastation the eidoley had brought to Hardhome – or _would_ _bring_, from my current position in time. However, perhaps it was a change the world needed after being frozen for eons in a neverending Long Night. I could see no such rationale when it came to the outer gods other cults worshipped. The followers of Au't sought to vanquish all truth. Emmigesh aspired to infest all life with a terrible ailment, to revel in the suffering and torment this affliction would cause for all times. Vaur apparently didn't reveal his goals even to his most devoted servants as nobody could wager a guess regarding the purpose of their obscene rites. The blighted god Kudruk was actually long dead and had been shattered by his rivals, the sister goddesses Atukur, Mashamesh, and Hashu'ib. The followers of the two factions were trying to either reassemble or prevent the reassembly of the pieces, mostly warring against one another and thereby staying out of the conflicts between other cults. Fa, on the other hand, wasn't dead, he had merely sunken to the floor of an unknown ocean. Should his followers somehow retrieve him from there, and most rival cults thought it unlikely, Fa would simply bring on the end of the world. In comparison, E'u was the lesser evil to me. At least there was a promise of knowledge and arcane insights, and the change he sought to bring wasn't necessarily for the worse.

Though most of my days were spent in the yard and the potion kitchen, I also frequently left the temple to procure materials for our work. Water from the hot springs in the west, oils and powders from the witch markets in the center of K'Dath. A few times I ventured outside the city to guard shipments of sky ore on the way from the mines. The cult of E'u belonged to the largest and most prominent factions in K'Dath, yet we still had to be wary of our many rivals. Occasionally, insolent heathens tried to steal or even destroy the precious cargo; desperate attempts at hindering our progress that rarely succeeded. Still, every sack, every bucket of sky ore mattered, therefore we did not take any risks. Armed with iridescent daggers and spears we escorted the transports from the mines to the temple, and I had a chance to see more of the city as a welcome byeffect.

However, what I saw rarely lived up to my expectations. In my time, people spoke of K'Dath in awe, made it out to be the answer to every unknowable secret. Yet they only saw the ruins of a once mighty city from the distance, the fading echo of a legend no living man had explored. I, on the other hand, saw the reality that now lay buried under the hot sands of time. The minarets, spires, and temples were architectural marvels, yes, unrivaled even by Valyria's glory. But underneath the impressive facades lingered forgotten abominations. Lies upon lies, to the very foundations. There was no beauty, no mystery in the dreadful steeple of Au't, no serenity or insight in Emmigesh's pestilential vaults. The temple of E'u alone stood as a beacon of truth and hope in this maze of falsehoods, and a dark, perilous hope it was.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

Work on the enormous husk in the tower went well. I had been speechless when Unnash first revealed it to me, but by now I had gotten used to the marvelous sight. Truth be told, I felt a bit silly when I learned that the smaller husks from the courtyard were merely parts of a much larger whole. Of course, an enourmous husk would be needed to contain E'u's greatness! Why had this thought never crossed my mind before? Chosen husks, if they were not currently possessed by eidoley, were brought into the tower, a structure tall enough to house six storeys, but lacking any floors. Instead, wooden walkways lined the inner walls, allowing the cultists to reach the full height of the giant contraption in the center. The hollow nature of the hoppered husks made them easy to handle even if they had to be lifted high above, therefore only small pulleys were needed. It was pleasant work, and I found it inspiring to see the project take shape, grow, form new connections with each piece we added.

I had never felt a greater sense of honor than the day Unnash told me my latest work had been chosen to be attached to the Great Husk of E'u. It was a stunning piece, the one I was most proud of, and I had secretly harbored hopes of being chosen for a while. In fact, the thought of the Perpetual Flux pulsating through my work, taking shape in the patterns my hands had forged, had occupied my mind for months. The stairstep structure of the crystals was perfect. Even, yet erratic, shimmering in a striking azure blue, except for the pronounced corners of the edges where pale gold and vivid orange faded into a deep red. This most astonishing husk had been brought to the tower at first light, two days after Unnash had told me about it being chosen. I had worked through the night to finish the finer details, and attaching it to the Great Husk had taken up most of the day, therefore I was as exhausted as I was elated in the evening. Still, I could not let go of the thoughts even as I drifted into hard-earned slumber, still imagined what it would be like when E'u possessed my masterpiece's perfect angles.

When I woke up I first thought I was still dreaming. It was dark, only the light of the eidoley in the sky fell through my chamber's window, and it took me a moment to realize I was wide awake. The ground was trembling, I heard screams from outside, ad sudden bright bursts of energy flashed through the night sky. Confused, I jumped up and rushed to the door, trying to understand what the frantic voices were saying.

"E'u has taken shape! E'u has awoken!"

That was High Priest Unnash, yelling over the rumbling and other voices outside. Could it be? Had the Perpetual Flux truly awoken? Had my perfect, azure blue husk tipped the scales? I hastily put on my robes so E'u would recognize me as his servant, then tore the door open and rushed down the hallway. The rumbling and trembling around me grew stronger, the incandescent bursts of light now flashed more frequently through the darkness, but I paid no heed. I had to get to the tower, had to see the Great Husk possessed with my own eyes.

"E'u has awoken! The Perpetual Flux has taken shape! E'u is no longer among the stars in the sky!"

Unnash's euphoric wailing became louder when I reached the courtyard, cutting sharply through the wild storm that raged. Fellow cultists poured out of every door, every tunnel, and their voices joined the chorus in ecstatic praise of E'u. I made my way through the maze of forges as fast as I could, almost tripping over tools and piles of sky ore, but not letting it slow me down. Finally! The gate of the tower! I lunged out, pushed it open, stumbled inside.

"E'u has awoken! E'u has awoken! The Perpetual Flux has taken shape! E'u is among us!"

Unnash's voice still echoed in my head long after I had realized that I had not entered the tower. Instead of the Great Husk, there was a plain grey tunnel, and at its end I recognized the door to my chamber in the House of the Undying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another gift, this time for my beta who is represented by the shapeless god E'u - who in turn, is inspired by the Sumerian trickster god Ea/Enki and the WH40k chaos god Tzeentch. The domains of both include knowledge, water, and change. E'u is also a play on my beta's screenname (and obviously Ea). Since he always wanted his personal doomsday cult, this was a match made in the outer hells. (Beta reader, changing stuff in my writing, god of change, very meta, tehe. Sometimes I'm this easily amused.)


	9. The Tattered Door

When I woke up my chamber felt colder than usual. It was not so much a chill as it was an absence of warmth. Not the freezing kind, it was merely the cold of a room that had not been heated by fire in days. Which was likely the reason; there was only a small pile of ashes in my hearth. After the vision of K'Dath I had been more exhausted than ever, and I had probably slept for several days. Real or imagined, working in the forges took a toll on the body, and in my daze I had not paid heed to it. What struck me as a bit odd was the fact that the Undying had apparently not sent for me yet. Did time truly hold no meaning to them? Did they want me refreshed and well-rested before the summon? I would find out soon enough.

Before leaving the room I made sure my robes were in best order. The lone candle on my desk barely afforded enough light to see myself in the dark, therefore I arranged the layers of black velvet mostly by touch. _Strange_, I thought, _the flame did not flicker_. It was perfectly still, undisturbed by my movement. Perhaps time stood still while the Undying was waiting for me.

The hallway outside evoked a sinister sensation, a strong feeling of being watched. There were no observable changes in my surroundings, nothing looked different than before at first sight. However, the familiarity was deceptive, even outright alarming. Of course things had changed, and of course I was supposed to not notice this fact. They didn't want me to know that my tireless efforts had borne fruit, wanted to keep the illusion of futility intact out of wounded pride. I'd do them the favor and play along for the time being. It would be safer to pretend that I didn't see through their nefarious tricks. As long as they thought they had me deceived, they wouldn't try to hinder me any further. I only had to make it to the chambers of the Undying. The sooner I got there, the sooner the misguided liars would realize that their foul tricks had been futile, but then it would be too late.

I ducked behind the ornate banister of a staircase when two warlocks, engaged in quiet chatter, walked by. Once they had passed, I darted out of my hideout and rushed down the hallway in the opposite direction. In the adjacent gallery I found a gaping chasm instead of the wide marble bridge I had expected. Of course. They had taken precautions. They had anticipated my path and tried to block it off with any obstacle they could think of. But I would not give up so easily, oh no, I would not! I turned on my heels and headed for a small chamber, cursing the feeble attempt at stopping me in my mind.

Descending the rope ladder in the narrow room wasn't difficult, yet it cost precious time. At least I knew the warlocks' supposed power couldn't reach the bottom of the chasm, and I would find no further nuisances down here. The snow that had covered the ground during my last visit was gone. Instead, pale grey ashes wafted through the charred ruins of Hardhome, an acromatic wasteland bare of any life. The eidoley had long moved on from this place and left nothing behind. Nothing except for the skeleton of the elevator on the southwestern cliff – which was all I needed to continue my way to the other side of the chasm.

Standing on top of the ledge and looking back to the hallway on the far side of the abyss, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. Did they really think I couldn't see through this illusion? It had been so obvious and dilettante! I still quietly cackled to myself when I entered the hallway, unable to contain my giddy anticipation. Boundless knowledge awaited! A reward that was mine, and mine alone, to reap! I almost felt pity for the envious warlocks, but the notion was fleeting. It was not my fault that their minds were too small, too limited, and that they were unwilling to change. The opportunity to expand their horizon had always been there, they had willingly chosen to remain blind to these truths.

I reached a wide room without a ceiling, its ancient floor titles shattered, its oily black stone walls overgrown with dead vines. The air was stale and humid, and a putrid stench lingered, along with an eerie absence of sound. I carefully sidestepped the crackles and chasms, circumvented piles of black boulders and rubble, always careful to not slip on the mossy stones. When I had almost made it halfway through the debris field, a sudden rumble caught me off guard. The ground was trembling, stronger and stronger, and I narrowly escaped the fall into a rift by reflexively grabbing a web of withered vines. There was no obvious cause for the sudden grave danger, no source for the emerging buzzing and humming that grew ever louder. Panicked, I looked around to find shelter and spotted the entrance to a tunnel somewhere to my right. I just barely made it there, moments before black rain pelted the ruins. It didn't feel safe so close to the opening though, therefore I ventured deeper into the tunnel and only sat down when I could no longer hear the ominous droning and buzzing.

They had caught me off guard with this illusion, I had to admit it. Though none of this was real, the noise and the shaking conjured up memories of a very real danger, one I had escaped by the skin of my teeth. Of course these events had left a mark on me. It felt as if I had witnessed the destruction of Yeen just yesterday, even though I knew it had occurred many years in the past. Now the envious warlocks wanted me to relive these horrors; an insidious mind game, yet another trick meant to deter me from walking a path I alone could explore. Yet their small minds had failed to account for one notable factor. They had forgotten that the walls of time and reality were pervious to me, that I was not as confined as lesser seekers. Realizing their oversight made me laugh out loud in triumph. They thought I was trapped in this trembling ruin, but I'd simply find a different passage to the Undying's chamber underground.

Following my instinct, I headed deeper into the tunnels. At first, I had to tread carefully as the black walls absorbed every light, and I had to feel my way through perfect darkness. After a while, however, there was a change in my surroundings. The walls no longer were oily and slick to the touch, and the blackness turned into a faint, murky half-light. There had to be an exit somewhere ahead, and so I kept walking in this direction. My eyes adjusted to the relative darkness the further I went, enough to see what I had only felt before with my fingers. Instead of a smooth, seamless surface, the walls were made of large, square bricks here, some of which were engraved with withered symbols. I couldn't make out details as it was still too dark, and once the light was sufficient I saw that the ravages of time had damaged the rock too much to decypher the symbols. However, the carvings were undeniably manmade and they became more plentiful the further I walked. This made me confident that I was closing in on the exit, a presumption that was confirmed by a hanging curtain shortly after.

At first glance, I was somewhat stumped. The curtain, though tattered and semi-translucent, was out of place in this ancient tunnel. I had expected to see unobstructed daylight upon reaching the exit, or perhaps the remains of stone barrier or a door of some sort. Yet there were no traces of either having ever existed. No shattered wood, no debris, just the odd choice of thin linen that offered no protection from the elements - which certainly explained the weather-worn nature of the symbols. The faded piece of fabric was grey, but long ago it had probably been colored as there were darker and lighter shades, hints of a pattern. More importantly, however, wan light shone through its many tears and holes, therefore I didn't linger on the former state of the curtain.

My touch was fatal to the bittle fabric, made it crumble and turn into little more than grey dust. What was revealed to me behind it was not what I had expected once more. The dead silence and stale air had suggested an enclosure, the courtyard perhaps, something surrounded by walls.Yet there were no structures, nothing that sheltered this place from noises and wind. I had not stepped out of a building, as I had assumed, either. The tunnel behind me led into a craggy hillscape, there was no temple, no castle, no ruin above. I stood in a desolate wasteland, so still that it seemed to be frozen in time. No insects chirped, no birds sang, no winds blew, no critters rustled the dry and withering vegetation. Rotting trunks of enormous trees lay scattered about; pale grey bark, no contrast in a triste landscape under a bleak, dun-colored sky. Here and there rock outcroppings emerged, not unlike the one behind me, some barren, others overgrown with leafless bramble and parched weeds.

I wandered around for a while, searched for entrances in other hills and didn't find any. In fact, there was nothing manmade at all, no evidence that people had ever settled here. In its barren nature the landscape resembled the vast Dothraki Sea. It, too, lacked obvious signs of inhabitation, yet this was owed to the nomadic culture of its people. Nomads did not dig elaborate tunnels nor did they carve symbols or build with large bricks. These were the hallmarks of cities, and cities did not disappear without a trace. Velos, Old Ghis, Borash, Gogossos, the fallen kingdom of Sarnor; their ruins still stood hundreds of years after the cities had been abandoned. Even Valyria hadn't vanished without a trace after the Doom, the remains of the once splendid cities could still be seen on the peninsula's coasts.

I inspected some of the dead trees, tried to determine how the giants had fallen, but I didn't find what I had hoped for on them either. No carvings in the bark, no marks of tools. Puzzled, I sat down on a boulder, absently stared to the bleak horizon, and pondered my situation. Was this another trick? But how could it be a trick if my own mind had created this path? And what did the warlocks hope to accomplish? There was no danger here, and I was out of their reach. Whatever plans they had to keep me away from the Undying and the boundless knowledge I'd find in his chamber could not come to fruition this way. Lost in thought, I almost didn't realize that my gaze no longer aimlessly drifted, but had lingered on something I couldn't fully make out in the distance for a while.

Intrigued, I got up from my seat and narrowed my eyes. Sheer habit, there was no sun, only the same dull half-light all across the endless sky, therefore blinking didn't improve my vision. Yet I doubtlessly saw something unusual on the horizon, hazy grey outlines that were neither rocks nor fallen trees.

Coming closer, the image cleared up more and more, and I recognized my discovery as ruins of some sort. There was no rhyme or reason to them and I couldn't venture a guess what the structures had been. A freestanding archway emerged from piles of rubble, perhaps it had once been part of a wall. Thick columns that didn't support any roofs or walkways, some seemingly untouched, others broken off in the middle. Short walls, the kind one would find around gardens or estates, more decoration than barrier, but here their patterns were arbitary and there were neither houses nor plants enclosed in them. An enormous fountain, though none of the basins was filled with water, and the pillar that had probably once held a statue was empty as well. Other structures didn't shed more light on their nature. Crumbling walls, some with doorways or windows, but no hints what the complete building could have been. Pedestals and platforms, stairs that led nowhere, and huge piles of debris.

Was this the Dothraki Sea, after all? The strange, dim light made the landscape look more triste and desolate than I remembered the steppes of Essos, and it lacked the tall grass. But the Dothraki Sea was a vast region and though I had traveled extensively, there were certainly places I had not seen. Maybe I was north of Lhazar, somewhere near the Kingdom of Omber or even east of Ifequevron's forests, which would explain the scattered mammoth trees. Climate and landscape were harsher in these places, the flat grasslands transitioned into hillscapes there, that much I knew.

This theory only held up until I reached the outskirts of the ruins. Not all the khalasars in the world acting as one could have been responsible for this kind of destruction. It went beyond the scope of any raids I had ever heard of, and the telltale signs of Dothraki involvement were absent as well. The remains of the structures were not scorched. The dry ground had not been trampled by hooves. In the rubble around the fountain I saw things a marauding horde would not have left behind; weapons, pieces of armor, carts and containers commonly used on markets. And a staggering amount of pale bones. Dothraki took captives to sell on the slave markets of the Free Cities or Slaver's Bay, yet here the valuable spoils had simply been slain.

It was still silent, quite eerily so, and I was overcome by the strangest of sensations. This place did not feel haunted. Mass graves and sites of slaughter often conjured up feelings of being watched by ghostly eyes, yet here this impression was entirely absent. The sight did not make me shudder. In fact it made me feel nothing at all, and it was this realization that truly disturbed me. However, it was also obvious that the unknown attackers had long moved on, therefore I descended the sloping hills and entered the ruins.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

An aura of great antiquity shrouded the crumbling stones, and the strange nothingness I had felt was replaced with a sense of being in the presence of something older than time. I now also realized that the scattered bones were not merely pale, they had an unnatural quality to them that hadn't been visible from the distance. My curiosity was piqued and I strolled to the nearest pile for a closer inspection. Shattered statues, broken carts, and weapons unlike any I had ever seen piled up near a wall, along with enough bones to account for an army. Even in this disarray, one disturbing aspect stood out clear as day. The bones were not human as the nearby weapons and armor parts had suggested, and I couldn't tell what kind of beasts they had once belonged to either. Skeletal arms, longer than a man's body, some with too many or too few fingers, others with talons instead of hands. Spiked spines that resembled the size and shape of large lizards, entire torsos that had more than four limbs. Bizarre skulls, not a single one looking human. Some lacked eye sockets, others had long beaks instead of jaws, or gaping maws filled with sharp teeth on two sides. Many skulls sprouted strange, ossified outgrows, the most absurd ones suggested the creature had had only one enormous, curved horn where a face should have been.

As disturbing as the sight was, it also gave me a clue. It was evident that these grotesque abominations had worn the armor and wielded the weapons. Their skeletal hands were still wrapped around hilts, ribcages and bones of limbs filled breastplates, greaves, and bracers. These creatures had not been savage beasts, they had made a coordinated attack on the ruined city. There had to be something worthwhile here, something so powerful and important that even hellspawns and demons came forth from legend to seize it. The devastation was not as chaotic as it had first seemed, there was a pattern to it. And following the trail I now saw would lead me to the target of this hellish assault.

It was a hatch, located in what had probably been the center of the city, surrounded by the crumbled remains of walls. Maybe a building had once sheltered this entrance, but there was hardly anything left of it now. The piles of bones and weapons towered higher around it, yet the hatch itself was completely free of debris. It looked as if a strong force had erupted from it, blasting the attacking hordes outward and forming a crater from their bodies. How the defenders could possibly have achieved such a feat was a question I couldn't answer, but whatever powers they had unleashed had apparently led to success. The hatch was untouched, not even damaged, therefore I presumed I'd find some answers down there. Maybe this was where the tunnel ended, where I would have emerged if had I taken a different turn instead of heading for the light once I saw it.

There was no handle or ring, but it didn't deter me. I looked around for something to use as a lever, and found a strange snake-shaped spear that turned out to be well-suited to force the hatch open. The musty scent of ages long gone wafted up from the shaft and I immediately recognized the square bricks of the walls. Unlike in the tunnel, the symbols were not illegible here. This fact alone would already provide a first answer, the one to the lingering question where in the world I was. I knelt down next to the hatch to take a closer look at the script and what I found confused me anew. It was a language I could neither speak nor write, but I recognized the scripture as Old Lengii.

I was on Leng? The landscape certainly disagreed with this notion. The island of Leng was known for its verdant forests and jungles, and the climate was warmer, more humid than this arid wasteland. Furthermore, the ruins resembled neither the YiTish architecture of the northern coast nor the native Lengii style that could be seen in the southern city of Turrani. However, Leng was also known to have vast underground mazes. Perhaps I had merely discovered a particularly untypical region. And wasn't it already untypical, fantastical even, that the landscape was littered with malformed, demonic corpses? If I wanted an explanation for either I had to enter the shaft and explore the tunnels, and so I descended the mossy stairs into the dark.

﴾ _____________________________________________________________________________________ ﴿

To my surprise, I did not find myself surrounded by darkness once I arrived at the foot of the stairs. A faint, unnatural glow filled the long hallway. The light slowly and steadily changed in intensity, like the rhythm of a beating heart. I couldn't tell what color the source might have, just that it wasn't white. At its brightest it illuminated the full length of the tunnel, and on the far end I could see a heavy door. Was the ruin above not as abandoned as it looked? Had some of the defenders survived underground? I had to find out, so I didn't think twice and rushed toward the ornate door.

After only a few steps I paused as my sudden movement had brought about something new that drew my attention. Left and right of me symbols lit up as I went by, glowing briefly in the same inexplicable color, albeit much brighter. When I stopped to inspect them, however, the glow instantly faded. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of symbols on each wall, and I was unable to tell which of them had reacted to me. Warding glyphs meant to fend off invaders? Some kind of sorcerous warning I had triggered by breaching the hatch? Whatever it was, it did me no harm, therefore I concluded such effects – if there were any – were reserved for the strange abominations. A last line of defense that would buy the defenders time, should the creatures manage to enter the tunnel.

The door opened without a sound. At first, I thought my approach had triggered another magical mechanism, but when the glow flared up once again I realized I was not alone. In the chamber behind the door stood a group of milk-pale men, the last thing I had expected to find under ancient ruins. Their sharp, flat features looked like chiseled from marble, silver rings and chains dangled from their nostrils and ears. Like myself, they were dressed in dark velvet robes, so black it looked as if they wore a piece of the night. The round, pointy kalpaks on their bald heads stood in stark contrast to the absence of colors; bright oranges, yellows, and greens, lined with fur.

"Welcome home, seeker," the leader of the group greeted me, a hint of melancholy in his voice. "It has been too long since a living soul has returned to these halls."

"Home?" I echoed, still baffled to have found people in a place I had thought abandoned for eons. "Have I been here before? Do you know who I am? Should I know who you are?"

"It never gets easier, does it?" the man said more to himself, and the group answered with silent nods and deep sighs. "Wandering the world in its last days takes a toll on the mind," he continued, now speaking directly to me again. "Two decades, it is a long time to be out there alone. Come, sit with us. We will help you remember one last time."

This was less of an explanation than I had hoped for, but perhaps it would soon make some more sense. I followed the group into the chamber, and when the heavy door had fallen shut behind us, a vague sensation of familiarity washed over my mind. Had I really been here before? I had traveled to Leng in the past, though only briefly. Perhaps I had seen similar places during my visit and the details escaped me. I certainly had never descended into the tunnels; the underground mazes had been sealed for hundreds of years. Still, I couldn't help but think there was something I should remember, vivid memories that were just one thought out of reach.

We entered a larger room, nothing but a round table surrounded by simple chairs standing in its center. My eyes were immediately drawn to the spherical ceiling, painted with what looked like a map of the world. In the pulsating glow of the strangly colored light landscapes and oceans emerged from the murky darkness, then faded again. A single glowing symbol remained illuminated, and in its halo I recognized the outlines of Leng.

The pale men remained silent once we had taken seats around the table, and they, too, regarded the ceiling for a while. "So we truly are the last," one of them, the one who had spoken before, said with a sigh. His voice carried resignation, but no surprise or disappointment. Whatever had inspired the ominous remark, it had not come unexpected.

"The last what?" I inquired. It felt as if I knew the answer deep down inside, but just couldn't reach this part of my mind.

"The last of everything." The man sighed again. "We are all that is left of the world and its peoples. No child has been born in hundreds of years, and we have lived far beyond natural limits. The magic that has sustained us for the past decades is waning. There will be no generations after us once we are gone, and the day of our final demise comes ever closer."

"I don't understand," I muttered, though in some way I did. "How can there be no people left in this world? What happened to them? Where did they go? Hundred thousands of people cannot simply vanish. They must have gone somewhere, and we..." I broke off when the milk-pale man shook his head.

"We harbored the same hope," he said with sad deliberation. "We sent out seekers, as many as we could spare. Only few ever returned, and they never found anything but destruction." He got up from his chair and pointed to the ceiling with a long, bony finger. "Great Moraq, lost a thousand years ago, all that remains is charred bones and ashes." A glyph briefly flared up on the ceiling, making the shape of the island visible in the dark. "Far Mossovy, lost four hundred years ago. Their demon hunters and shapechangers fought the abominations for many decades, but in the end their last stronghold fell to the hordes." Again, a symbol lit up on the painted map for a moment. "The Five Forts of Yi Ti. Not even the world's mightiest fortresses could withstand the onslaught, and not even the wisest sorcerers of the Golden Empire could determine the cause of the great cataclysm."

One by one, symbols flashed on and off along the invisible trail of his finger, accompanied by accounts of perdition and doom. Empires known and unknown had fallen to the dreadful attackers, some over night, others after centuries of struggle. The Lengii sorcerers alone had prevailed in these ancient tunnels, had witnessed the demise of the world from afar.

The haze in my mind had cleared the more I had listened, and the pieces of the puzzle now fit together. I remembered visions of great destruction; Valyria, Hardhome, Yeen, Sarnor, K'Dath. But only now I realized that these experiences had been real, all of them, from the very beginning. Walking through walls of reality and time had always been my innate talent, my providence, my fated purpose! It taken a lifetime to awaken this knowledge from its deep slumber, but here and now I finally saw my true destiny clear as day.

"...as you see. We are the last, and our own end is drawing near," the milk-pale man concluded his speech. The symbol marking Leng briefly flickered as if to underline his gloomy prediction. I hastily nodded, too preoccupied with my own thoughts to pay much attention. "Would you like to see it again before we will perish?" the man asked, the pained melancholy once more vibrating in his words. "Come, let us behold it together for one last revelation."

I didn't know what he was talking about, but I stood up and followed him to a small, concealed door. Whatever revelation was hiding behind it, it would be a welcome addition to my collection. However, I had severely underestimated the impact. When the door opened, the light was blinding and I instinctively raised my arms to shelter my eyes. "The Nameless One," I heard the pale man say. "The last secret, the one we have guarded in vain for so many years. Our magic can no longer keep it dormant. Perhaps any attempt to do so has been futile all along. Depriving the enemy of the Nameless One's power hasn't stopped, not even slowed down the advance. Now we know that we are truly alone in this world, there is nothing left to guard and..."

I shrieked with utter disgust when I opened my eyes. What I saw was truly appalling and wrong, oh so wrong. A huge sarcophagus, glowing in the inexplicable color, took up most of the room. Bright flashes of light and voids of unfathomable darkness swirled within it, and filtered through uncountable crystals, the light made it seem as if even the walls of the chamber were pulsating with perverted life._ It was not E'u._ It was not his great, perpetual flux; it was a twisted, corrupted, abominable falsehood.

"No! I refuse!" I shouted, my voice cracking with anger. "I refuse! I will not submit to your despicable lies!" The pale man didn't answer. He just stood there, staring at me in confusion and shock. "This is not _my_ destiny," I hissed at him, then turned on my heel to rush out of the chamber, but before I reached the door the world erupted in intense, dazzling light. One violent outburst of the nameless color emmbraced me, all-compassing and yet perfectly silent, then the blackness of the swirling void shadowed my mind.


	10. The Open Door

The eruption of light had left me dazzled, and it took a while for my eyes to adjust. When my vision finally cleared I recognized my surroundings as the House of the Undying, albeit not at first glance. The very first thing I saw was dust. Fine, grey dust. It covered the floor of the hallway like snow, untouched, undisturbed by footsteps or wind. It clung to the walls, ashen and brittle. It piled up in corners, around columns, under stairwells. At first I thought it was a trick of the eye, the aftereffect of the indescribable color, but when I began walking down the hallway I realized it was not. The dust, and only the dust, looked tangible and real. The walls, the columns, the stairwells, the banisters, it all had the blurred, translucent quality of a dream.

Was it a vision, a memory, an illusion? Had the force of the eruption left me unconscious and I was still on Leng? It was a possible explanation, but it didn't ring true. I felt awake and aware despite my strange surroundings, and quite strange they were. Columns lacked their fluting and ornate decorations, the walls of the hallway bore no features at all. Doors I passed by looked alike as if they were one and the same, and even though I walked at a brisk pace this sight never changed. I found the same dust-covered floors and the same nondescript walls with the same plain doors around every corner, the only variation being length or width of my path. The interconnecting galleries didn't change either; unremarkable vaults of the same size and shape. Deep down I knew the House of the Undying had not always looked this way, yet I couldn't remember its previous state no matter how much I racked my brain.

A few times I saw hazy spectres pass by in the twilight, man-shaped blurs of faded colors; milk-white, burgundy, purple, and grey. I was never quite sure if I really saw them or merely thought there _should_ be a man, but none was truly there. Too fleeting, too translucent, lingering remnants of memories, almost forgotten encounters. Although I hurried and tried to catch up when I saw them in the distance, I never came close enough to confirm or refute their existence.

It surprised me to see the library's double doors, and an even greater relief washed over me in that moment. This sight was familiar, not as surreal as the hallways, but what I found inside once more left me confused. Shelves had overflowed with tomes and scrolls here, yet they were empty now and covered in dust. Here and there leather husks lay scattered about; skeletons of books, their pages missing. The desks seemed to have been abandoned decades ago; cobwebs ornamented the candlesticks, dust covered the surfaces of tables and chairs. For a while I wandered between the aisles, looking for something, anything at all, that had withstood the ravages of time. Yet I found nothing but crates and shelves filled with dust.

Disturbed, I returned to the hallway. There had to be an explanation for this. A magical experiment gone wrong? Another vision of a dark, distant future? Perhaps the answer lay hidden behind one of the doors. The warlocks had to be somewhere, and considering the quite literal state of the Palace of Dust, it was entirely possible they were hiding from something. I rushed toward the nearest door, only a few steps down the hallway to my left, to begin my investigation. Yet when I reached for the doorknob I realized with horror that I couldn't touch it. My hand went right through the dull brass, and upon further inspection the door in its entirety didn't seem quite real. It too had a hazy, dream-like quality to it, just like the stairs, the desks, and the hallways.

Panic began to rise up in me, and it grew with each door I tried to open. Every single one evaded my grasp, and I must have tried quite a few. Again, I stumbled through seemingly endless hallways and empty galleries; aimless yet driven, just like before. Though I tried to recall where stairwells or junctions should lead, I simply couldn't remember the details. Was my chamber upstairs or downstairs, left or right? What had been there, where there was now only dust? Paintings, carvings, inscriptions, perhaps? There were no clues to aid my orientation, but I had to keep moving. Had to find a door, had to figure out what had happened.

The light seemed dazzling despite the distance when I noticed its foggy glow at the end of the hall, brighter even than the eruption on Leng. Coming closer, however, I realized it couldn't be any brighter than daylight. The radiance faded, it was dim and faint, but it doubtlessly originated outside. An open door, a large one at that. It was the entrance to the House of the Undying, the door facing the path to the city center of Qarth. A distant memory echoed in the back of my head, an unfamiliar voice telling me that this door only led in, never out. Yet here it was, in front of me, and wide open.

I lost no time to hesitation. This was my only chance to get out of the maze of nondescript hallways, and it had taken me hours, perhaps even days, to find it. I hurried, ran as fast as I could, afraid the door might fall shut just before I would reach it. But no such thing happened. I stumbled outside, half-blinded by daylight, and when my eyes adjusted to the sudden change I could hardly believe what they saw. The Queen of Cities was not there. Before me lay grey, crumbling ruins instead.

I walked the empty, dust-covered streets in disbelief for a while, yet couldn't find any signs of Qarth' great civilization. The remains of the once splendid buildings were brittle, some collapsed right under my eyes. What had these structures been? I couldn't remember. Logic dictated that there had been a port by the coast, but I couldn't put the pieces of this puzzle together. There was no ocean, and the debris could have been anything or nothing at all. Perhaps it had never even been a city. Maybe my mind was searching patterns in this haphazard arrangement of dust and rubble out of habit, tried to convince me this forlorn place had been something else in the past.

Disenchanted, I kept walking in an arbitrary direction, away from the meaningless ruins of a city that may never have been. I don't know for how many hours, days, or weeks I wandered the bleak, barren landscape as there was nothing to aid in the keeping of time. Time must have passed, but there was neither night nor day. The sky never changed, it remained vast and empty. No stars twinkled, no sun set or rose, not even clouds drifted through the indifferent grey. A wan twilight shrouded the world, an in-between of the absence of darkness and the absence of light. It was neither hot nor cold, neither humid nor dry, and I didn't feel thirst, hunger or exhaustion.

At some point my aimless journey took me to an elevation from where I could see a wide valley below. Crumbling ruins as far as the eye could see, lining the banks of a dried-out river. I descended the sloped path to inspect what I had discovered, but once more I found nothing but rubble and dust. The structures must have been ravaged eons ago, their shapes so damaged I couldn't venture a guess regarding the purpose they may have served in the past. One object stood out to me though as it seemed more defined from the distance. Half a man's height, pyramidal, composed of angles and edges that formed a strange stairstep structure. I thought there was a certain shimmer to it, suggesting it was made of some kind of metal. Coming closer, however, my initial excitement quickly faded. Though the object still seemed vaguely familiar, it turned out to be merely rock, smoothed beyond recognition by weather and time. I tried to brush off the dust with my sleeve, still clinging to hope there's be more to the object than met the eye. It crumbled under my touch even though I barely applied any pressure; a hollow husk that collapsed, more debris merging with its grey surroundings.

Disappointed, I moved on, followed the barren riverbed in what I thought might be the northern direction. The absence of sun, moon, and stars left me confused and disoriented, and I can't claim to have relied upon instinct either. There was no gut feeling that told me where to go, no lingering sense of danger that drove me away. I simply kept walking, somewhere, anywhere, because there was no reason to stay.

Weeks, months or years went by as I wandered and wandered, but the landscapes I passed through hardly changed. Grey rock and dust, here and there crumbling ruins that evoked no memories, no sense of recognition, and lacked signs of life. Two enormous statues that may once have resembled prancing horses fell apart on the distant horizon. When I reached them they were nothing but shapeless piles of debris, and I could barely recall what they had looked like before. I trailed another riverbed to where I expect a coast, but found merely a vast desert of grey sand in its basin. The remains of a cyclopean pyramid greeted me on the dry river's mouth. Perhaps it had once been the landmark of a great city that was no longer there as I could make out the eroded remains of walls or fortifications.

In the plains I came across the ruins of yet another city or village. At first sight it was no different than the many lost places I had seen on my journey, but I was overcome by the feeling that I had been here before. I climbed a large pile of boulders, - maybe a natural formation, maybe a collapsed tower or wall, and surveyed my surroundings, but no recollection of this place emerged in my mind. It was quiet and windless like anywhere else in this dead world, and the ruins didn't give up their secrets, no matter how long I stood there and stared. Only when my gaze drifted across the plains to the bleak horizon I noticed something that set this place apart.

A deep black cloud contrasted the monotonous grey of the landscape and there was undeniably movement in the distance as well. Enthralled by the sight I stared at what I soon recognized as a horde of riders coming closer. An ink-black and amorphous mass, living shadows cast by an absent sun, with fierce eyes, glowing in an indescribable color. Unable to move, I awaited their arrival on top of the elevation, wondering with vague bemusement why I was not afraid. Wasn't this a frightening situation? Shouldn't there have been a sense of imminent danger in the air? Yet I felt nothing but mild anticipation; subdued excitement about the discovery that other beings existed in this empty world.

The horde drew closer, surrounded by an eerie absence of sound. No clopping of hooves, no battle cries, no swishing of their curved shadow blades in the air, and despite their vast numbers the ground did not tremble either. My excitement faded the closer they came – and so did they. The deep black turned into translucent grey, making the barren landscape visible through their hazy shapes. The light of their glowing eyes grew weaker and weaker, lost intensity, brightness, and its indescribable color until it was simple grey. For one brief moment I tried to lock eyes with their leader, yet his once seething gaze went right through me like I was not there.

They never reached the ruins. Even the last ghostlike riders had faded before the horde crossed the rubble line that had probably been the wall of the city, and I couldn't tell if they had ever been there at all. Fleeting figments of my imagination, glimpses of memories long lost, half-remembered tales from the past, a dream dissolved by the first light of day. Each of these explanations had as much merit as the possible reality of what I had witnessed.

I felt only indifference about the horde's gradual disappearance. It did not matter why they were gone. Knowing the reason would not have changed a thing. I descended the pile of debris, not to search for evidence in the grey sand, only to resume my lone journey. There was nothing to find, neither here nor anywhere else, and as I kept walking my indifference shifted into mournful acceptance. This was the end of my journey, its final revelation. No matter how long or how far I'd wander this wasteland of visions, this empty world held no more secrets for me.

Maybe time passed, maybe it had ceased to exist altogether, it certainly made no difference anymore. There was nowhere to go, nothing left to discover, yet I ventured forth because it was the only thing I could do. On occasion I came across a place that seemed to remind me of something, but I could never conjure those memories back from the haze. A grey city rose on the horizon, spreading out all across a grey valley; grey spires, minarets, and temples towering behind its grey walls. Though I was drawn to it, I did not direct my steps toward its gate. A mirage, another trick of my mind, an illusion that disappeared within the blink of an eye. A fractured landscape, scattered with monumental ruins, stretched out in what once used to be an ocean. It, too, was gone within a heartbeat, and once more I was not surprised at its disappearance. All that was real in this world was the endless, grey dust.

When I reached yet another debris field, years or eons later, I did not expect it to be real at first sight. Only after roaming the ruins for a long while I recognized it as the place where my journey had begun. I couldn't recall what the purpose of this journey might have been, what had driven me to this location, what I had hoped to find here so many lifetimes ago. Yet it was a respite from the monotony, therefore I went closer. The faint outline of a trampled path led to a half-collapsed building, a long and windowless structure with only one visible door. Only the frame was left, the wood and metal of the door had long rotted and rusted away, and nothing hindered me from entering the building.

A sudden wave of images flashed through my mind, too brief, too fleeting to spark recognition, and at the same time the ailing archway behind me collapsed as so many structures before.

I have been here ever since, in this palace of dust, roaming its empty hallways, trapped within an overwhelming absence of impressions. Some days I remember fragments of a life I once lived, memories drifting through time, mirages dancing in the distance, answers lurking behind the rubble of a collapsed hallway, just out of reach. In the corner of my eye, I sometimes see a woman; faceless, nameless, mocking me with her laughter. Whenever I turn around she's gone, and I only catch a glimpse of her flowing, azure gown, the only color left in this grey world of nothing. Maybe I loved her once. Maybe this place was our home. Maybe this dream within a dream will one day be forgotten. Maybe even these maybes are just another illusion, and I have never been more than a ghost echoing in long abandoned halls. Maybe all I am, all I used to be, all I could ever have been, will disappear in every way when I, too, fade to grey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **2020 PLANS**
> 
> **Last Embers** will continue as usual, but the update schedule will change from Wednesday to Friday next year. The first chapter of 2020 will be posted on January 3. There will be an update every two weeks as usual. The story is roughly at its halfway point now, so not much will change. The 'Major Character Death' warning will be added at some point, but that's it.
> 
> **Lovecraft meets Westeros** will continue as well. Updates will be posted every two weeks if a story is in progress, though I won't post stories back to back anymore (to have more time to stockpile chapters for both series). For 2020, there are currently three stories planned (starting in Feb), which should cover winter/spring:
> 
> \- "Bitter Brine" – The tale of the 'Lost King' Therron Farwynd. Ironborn-centric, explores the lore around the Drowned God and the Seastone Chair (for JohnSpangler).
> 
> \- "Grotesque" – The tale of a Volantene noblewoman who uncovers terrible secrets in Mantarys. Explores Mantarys and the Demon Road in southern Essos (for RuffedLemur and JohnSpangler).
> 
> \- "The Lost Colony of Silverspear" – The tragic events surrounding the Summer Islanders' early colonization attempts of Sothoryos. Set at Basilisk Point, also explores the Isle of Tears.
> 
> Other than that, I keep polishing my outlines for the third part of the trilogy and the Others-centric tie-in, daydream about a pro wrestling AU retelling of the War of the Five Kings or an ambitious self insert into a random parrot on the Summer Islands, and despair over my Steam achievement ratio that is never neat enough.


End file.
